Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

I stopped beside Hermione’s bed with one hand half raised. Her arm was fixed above the blanket, and I could not decide where to touch her without putting pressure on a joint that would not move.

Madam Pomfrey drew the covering up carefully beneath it. ‘You can speak to her,’ she said. ‘I can’t promise that she hears you.’

I said Hermione’s name again, more quietly. There was no change in her face, and after a moment Pomfrey moved beside me to check something near her wrist.

A shoe protruded beneath the blanket behind the other screen. McGonagall followed my gaze and told us that Penelope Clearwater was in the second bed. They had been found together on their way back from the library.

Harry looked at the small mirror McGonagall was holding. ‘Why did they have that?’ he asked, turning towards me when I reached for it and stopped.

‘I gave it to Hermione. After you went down to the pitch, I thought of something about the attacks.’ I tried to describe the water, the camera and Nick’s position, but I was speaking too quickly. Harry frowned when I reached the part about protection.

‘From being killed,’ I said, starting again. ‘Possibly. I thought seeing it indirectly might explain why the others were alive. I didn’t know the mirror would stop anything happening to her.’

McGonagall set it face down on the cabinet. ‘Your warning was sensible. Our arrangements were insufficient, and I authorised that journey.’ She looked at the two beds before turning back to me.

‘I could have gone with them.’ I could see the three of us leaving the hall together, as clearly as I could see Hermione taking the mirror from my hand.

‘And there might be a third bed,’ McGonagall said. Pomfrey asked us to step back, and the conversation ended because there was work to do around the people who were actually lying there.

Hermione’s beaded bag stood beside her bed. I recognised its fastening and moved close enough to tell Pomfrey quietly about the two things inside that belonged to me.

‘A sealed bottle of unicorn blood and a wrapped horn,’ I said. ‘Neither has been used. Hermione was keeping them for me.’

Pomfrey’s eyes sharpened. She had me identify the parcels without opening the bottle, then put the whole bag into a locked cupboard. Her questions would come later, she said, when the immediate danger had been dealt with; until Hermione could make her own arrangements, the bag would stay there.

I agreed and stepped away from the cupboard. Its closed door was the first thing in the ward I could look at without wishing I had done something differently that morning.

Ron was waiting near the exit. ‘What happened with Ginny?’ he asked McGonagall, keeping his voice low as she brought us into an empty stretch of corridor.

‘She is here, in a separate room. Professor Sprout is with her.’ McGonagall waited while Ron glanced back towards the ward. ‘She is exhausted and frightened, and cannot account for part of this morning. The cloth appears to come from one of her jumpers. We have not found the jumper itself.’

Ron pressed his palms against his robes. ‘Does she know where the book is? Did you ask her about it?’

‘She says she hasn’t got it. Her school things have been searched, and Professor Dumbledore has spoken to her. We are contacting your parents.’ McGonagall’s voice remained level, leaving Ron room to hear each part before she continued.

I asked whether Dumbledore had read my letter. She glanced along the corridor, then made us draw closer.

‘He gave it to me. There is something he asked me to tell you if I reached you first.’ Her eyes moved from Harry to me. ‘Tom Marvolo Riddle was a pupil here. He was later known as Lord Voldemort.’

Harry became very still. I saw the boy from the diary again, with his neat hair and raised wand, patiently making sure I watched Hagrid being accused.

I had written my name in his book. The answering script had greeted me politely, and I had kept asking questions because I wanted what it seemed able to give me.

‘That does not establish what the object contains,’ McGonagall continued. ‘It is enough to treat it as dangerous. If it returns to you, do not write in it again. Bring an adult to it.’

Ron said his sister’s name. McGonagall told him she was being watched and cared for, and that the questions would continue when she was able to answer them. A frightened child might deny something she needed help with.

‘Or be made to deny it,’ I said. I remembered the light opening while my unfinished question was still under my hand. ‘We don’t know what else the book can do.’

‘That possibility is being considered.’ McGonagall let us ask the rest, even though she could not yet tell us whether closing the diary stopped its effects or whether it could reach a person who was no longer touching it. I had wrapped it in an ordinary cloth and felt I had accomplished something useful.

She could tell us that every member of staff had received the warning about looking at the creature. Sprout was preparing the mandrakes for the remedy as soon as they were ready. Then she escorted us back to Gryffindor Tower, where the students had gathered to hear the new restrictions.

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By six that evening, everyone had to be in a common room. Teachers would accompany classes; a prefect alone would no longer be enough. Clubs and practices were suspended, and McGonagall told us plainly that further attacks could force the school to close.

Percy sat near the portrait hole after she left. Ron asked about Ginny and received the same information we already had, then Percy asked whether we had seen Penelope.

‘She’s alive,’ I told him. He nodded once, as though I had given him something he needed to remember, and stayed in his chair while we went upstairs.

The inspection of our room was finished. McGonagall had authorised repairs to the damaged lock and cage, and somebody had already straightened the bars. Leo was on my bedpost, watching me with an expression that made the state of the accommodation seem entirely my fault.

He accepted my finger against his breast, grumbled and spread both wings before folding them again. I put out fresh water, then sat on the bed and checked my pouch. Several prepared strips had frayed edges; I set them aside, unwilling to carry doubtful work into a corridor where I might need it.

Harry watched from the next bed. ‘Hagrid knows what happened outside that memory. There must be something he can tell us about the rest of it.’

Ron reminded him that Dumbledore was speaking to Hagrid. I heard the warning in that, and kept sorting the sound strips into their separate folds while I tried to accept that waiting was useful.

‘He hasn’t told us,’ I said at last. ‘I was the one the diary showed it to. I want him to know I understand whose version it was.’

It was a reason to talk to Hagrid. It was not a reason the conversation had to happen that night, and I knew the difference while Harry went to fetch his cloak. Ron looked towards the stairs, where there was no news about his sister, then told us we were coming straight back.

We crossed the grounds in a slow, awkward shuffle beneath the cloak. Keeping away from the lighted windows took us over uneven ground, and twice we stopped while someone freed a hem from beneath another person’s shoe. By Hagrid’s door, the promise to return immediately already felt less simple than it had upstairs.

He answered our knock with a crossbow across his chest. Harry lifted the cloak, and Hagrid’s alarm became dismay when he saw the three of us.

‘What’re you doin’ out?’ he demanded. I glanced at the crossbow and wished I had a better explanation ready.

‘Being stupid. Can we do it indoors?’ He stepped aside, and I went in before he could decide that leaving us outside might teach us more.

Hagrid bolted the door and set the crossbow beside his chair. The kettle was hot, but he poured water into an empty milk jug and stood looking at it until Harry said his name.

‘Hermione?’ he asked. We told him what we had seen, and his hands tightened round the kettle handle. ‘They’ll put her right. Professor Sprout knows what she’s doin’.’

‘We know who Riddle became,’ I said. ‘Dumbledore told us through McGonagall. The book wanted me to think you were the answer, but if there was something else in the school—’

A heavy knock cut across my question. Hagrid put the kettle down hard enough to make the lid jump, and Harry pulled the cloak over us beside the dresser.

Dumbledore entered with a small, stout man carrying a lime-green bowler hat. The visitor looked at the crossbow, then at Hagrid, and introduced his business with a sigh that suggested he had hoped somebody else might do it.

Hagrid addressed him as Minister. Beneath the cloak, Ron breathed, ‘Fudge,’ close to my ear, and I kept still while Cornelius Fudge took a folded document from his coat.

He spoke about the attacks, the Ministry’s duty to act and Hagrid’s record from fifty years ago. Hagrid was to be taken into custody while the investigation continued.

‘What new evidence do you have against him?’ Dumbledore asked. Fudge looked down at the document, although he had seemed quite familiar with it a moment before.

‘Albus, people want to know we’re doing something.’ He shifted his hat to the other hand. ‘We can’t just sit back while this continues.’

‘Then do something that may protect them. Arresting Hagrid will not find the creature.’ Dumbledore stood beside Hagrid, leaving Fudge to address the man whose freedom he was discussing.

‘It’s a precaution,’ Fudge told him. ‘If someone else is caught, you’ll be out at once.’

‘Azkaban?’ Hagrid’s voice scraped on the word. ‘That’s your precaution?’

Ron’s shoulder pressed against mine. Before Fudge could answer, another knock sounded, and Hagrid opened the door to Lucius Malfoy, who lifted his robes clear of the floor as he stepped inside.

Malfoy brought a second document. He had been looking for the Headmaster, he said; the governors had reached a decision.

Dumbledore read the sheet before responding. He examined the signatures and turned to the second page while Fudge rotated his hat between his hands. Malfoy waited a few seconds, then pointed out that all twelve governors had signed and the suspension took effect immediately.

‘The school is in the middle of an emergency,’ Fudge protested. Malfoy’s brief agreement made it clear that he considered this an argument in his favour.

Dumbledore folded the document along its crease. ‘Minerva will have charge of the school. She is to retain the investigation records. Nothing collected today is to be removed with my belongings.’

‘Naturally.’ Malfoy’s smile thinned when Dumbledore added that he would be writing to the governors individually. I could see only the side of his face, but there was considerably less pleasure in it than there had been at the door.

Hagrid began protesting loudly enough to send Fang under the table. Dumbledore laid a hand on his arm and promised to challenge both decisions, then looked across the hut. His gaze paused on the apparently empty space where we were standing.

‘My absence does not end the help available here,’ he said. ‘Those who need it must keep asking.’

I could not tell what he could see beneath the cloak. I stood without moving while Hagrid took his coat from its peg, missed a sleeve and tried again.

‘If anyone wanted ter find out the truth, they could follow the spiders,’ Hagrid said to the room. ‘That’s where I’d start. An’ someone’ll need ter feed Fang.’

The door closed behind them, and Harry pulled the cloak away. Hagrid’s absence seemed to leave too much room around every piece of furniture. The kettle began hissing, and I moved it off the heat before looking at the untouched mugs.

‘A teacher needs to hear what he said,’ Ron whispered. I found paper beside Hagrid’s shopping list and wrote down his exact words, adding that they might concern Aragog. I addressed the note to McGonagall and put it with the folded cloak by the door, where we would collect it on the way back.

A spider squeezed beneath the window frame and dropped outside. Another followed, and Harry looked from them to me.

I should have picked up the note. Instead, I thought about returning to the castle, giving another explanation and waiting while Hagrid was taken somewhere we could not reach. The movement at the window offered something immediate, and I let that make the decision for me.

‘We’ll look at where they’re going,’ I said. ‘If it takes us too far in, we turn back.’

Ron looked down at Fang, who had emerged from beneath the table. ‘You’d better know the way home,’ he told him, and the dog went towards the door.