Chapter 105 — Before the First Step

Ron stepped on the end of my sleeping bag while I was deciding whether to open my eyes. He apologised without stopping, and I sat up beneath a watery morning sky. Several hundred people had discovered together that sleeping on stone did little for their tempers. Harry was dressed already, with his glasses crooked and an unconvincing claim to have slept a bit.

Dumbledore waited for the scraping shoes and complaints to subside before explaining the arrangements. The search found no intruder in the places examined; entrances remained watched, and access to Gryffindor had been arranged while the damaged portrait received attention. We could return in house groups after breakfast. Before the tables were restored, I heard three people turn that into a declaration that Black had left.

Harry told Ron and Hermione about the conversation we overheard. I supplied the parts about the continuing search and Lupin’s absence being expected, which made Snape’s suggestion sound different. Ron thought this settled whether Black wanted Harry, and Harry turned his spoon beside untouched porridge while admitting it sounded that way.

I still had my doubts, but Harry had heard them already. Hermione pushed the milk towards him. He poured some but kept the spoon down, saying he would still rather know.

For several days, disturbances near the portrait turned heads. Then a chess argument lasted longer than the latest discussion of Black, and somebody complained about homework without mentioning him. Guards and the changed arrangements remained while fear stopped occupying every spare moment. My spare moments were already becoming difficult to find.

Hermione filled four pages with questions about human Transfiguration. I answered in the library with the relevant books closed and her watching my quill. She crossed out one sentence as too vague, unimpressed by my suggestion that I was helping her save ink.

‘Recognising your human shape and wanting to stop being an animal aren’t the same thing. Explain the difference,’ she said. I tried again, then waited while she read the completed answers twice. She finally put her quill down and said the theory was good. When I accused her of sounding surprised, she corrected it to relieved.

I drew our signed agreement from beneath my notebook. ‘I’d like to start preparing.’ She looked at the page before reminding me that we had not agreed to that yet. I said this was why I was raising it now, and we found a fresh sheet for the proposed stages.

She marked unanswered questions beside what I wrote. We argued about which needed answers before beginning until she found a gap concerning the daily spell I had read past several times. Most descriptions assumed an ordinary wand would work when directed towards the practitioner’s chest. Mine required a rather different arrangement.

Hermione also reminded me what McGonagall said about private experiments. I tapped the blunt end of my quill against the table, wanting to begin and unwilling to pretend that this difficulty would resolve itself after a month’s work. We agreed to take her the plan before collecting anything.

McGonagall let us finish explaining. Then she reminded me that proficiency with objects was no permission to experiment on my own body, and my distinction about preparation lasted only until she observed that preparation could be dangerous too. She straightened our papers and asked me to describe the stages without reading them.

Hermione had to explain which details she checked against another source. Our library discussion began to feel like a modest rehearsal by the time McGonagall separated the first pages from the rest. She would allow limited preparation, with checked materials, Pomfrey’s approval of the physical demands and supervision of the first work directing the daily spell through paper.

A quiet workroom and secure cupboard could be arranged. She kept the transformation pages beneath her hand while explaining that permission for the eventual attempt would be separate. We would examine the location, access to help and reasons to abandon it before I proceeded, regardless of whether I had finished the potion.

The recipe looked designed to make its practitioner drop something important. A mandrake leaf had to remain in my mouth from one full moon to the next; swallowing, losing or spitting it out meant beginning again. Afterwards it would go into a crystal vial with my saliva and receive clear moonlight. A month of care could still be spoiled by clouds.

Hermione compared old weather records without claiming they promised anything about our chosen night. We also needed my hair, a teaspoon of dew untouched by sunlight or people for seven days, and a death’s-head hawkmoth pupa. The mixture would rest undisturbed in darkness while I performed the daily incantation at sunrise and sunset.

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The accounts described a second heartbeat eventually accompanying the first. Repetitions would continue while we waited for the thunderstorm needed for the attempt. I read the stages again and asked who first thought this a sensible way to spend a month. Hermione said somebody had fortunately written down what worked, making further complaints difficult to justify without making them less attractive.

Sprout found us a shaded collecting space for the dew and arranged for it to remain undisturbed. Hermione recorded the dates and conditions.

I wrote to Tom with the description of the pupa McGonagall checked. The letter authorised the purchase and asked him to retain the supplier’s label.

Pomfrey focused on the thirteen-year-old intending to keep a leaf in his mouth for a month. She examined me, questioned the plan and required regular checks. Soreness or difficulty should be reported promptly, she said, without interpreting discomfort as proof that the magic worked. She would not let me become ill merely to avoid beginning again.

She arranged adjusted meals and magical nourishment. I was to improvise neither in the dormitory, and to stop if she told me to.

Silence was not itself required. Losing the leaf was the problem: a careless laugh, an argument or a hurried incantation could end the preparation. My teachers received arrangements for written answers and work that needed no speech during that stage. McGonagall observed that keeping quiet might prove especially demanding, while Hermione gave a corner of parchment suspiciously close attention.

We examined the brush problem before anything entered my mouth. Under McGonagall’s supervision, I demonstrated the movements without charging paper or attempting the spell. The brush indicated the intended direction at my chest; the inscribed piece would still need releasing while I spoke the words. Neither writing nor pointing alone would replace that sequence.

Testing whether it carried the daily spell would have to wait until after the leaf stage. Spending a month before that uncertainty could be settled annoyed me, though rushing the stages offered worse possibilities. I copied the order into my notebook where impatience would have to look directly past it.

On the afternoon before the full moon, I found Luna beside a window with a book across her knees. She marked her place with a finger while I explained what I was doing: the leaf, the written answers and the limited permission. I included the separate approval still needed for transforming, wanting her to hear the actual plan before seeing the quiet version of me.

‘So you won’t be ill?’ she asked. I said that was the intention, with Pomfrey checking that I remained well. Luna was glad to know which sort of quiet to expect, then took my notebook and wrote on a fresh page before handing it back.

I shall save you a seat. Beneath it she had drawn a little chair with an unnecessarily large cushion. I looked up, finding the month ahead less absurd, and told her she could still describe her day. She said she intended to, then caught my hand after I kissed her goodbye.

That evening, beneath a clear full moon, I placed the mandrake leaf in my mouth. The urge to complain arrived almost immediately, sending my hand towards a pencil instead. By breakfast it seemed to occupy most of the available space, though checking as carefully as I could assured me it had not grown. At Hogwarts that distinction deserved attention.

Ron waited until I settled with Pomfrey’s arranged food before asking whether I was enjoying a quiet morning. I held up a page saying I could still throw things. Harry read it over his shoulder and moved the jug away, making Ron grin widely enough to complicate my own effort not to laugh.

The joke lasted all week. I discovered that a good reply could be thought of, written carefully and presented after everyone had changed the subject. Hermione recommended a smaller notebook, then put one beside my hand despite the thanks for her revolutionary contribution I wrote in the large one. I used it that afternoon.

Lessons acquired an unfamiliar distance. I watched mistakes I wanted to correct, remembering that other people had watched plenty of mine, and concentrated on patterns, old notes and the exercises agreed with teachers. My prepared strips remained unused. Managing the leaf while directing a spell was a complication I would not test casually in a classroom.

I noticed the absence of casting more as the days passed. Familiar routes and friends beside me reduced the chance of needing to defend myself alone, but also made my dependence more obvious than I liked. The choice remained mine, which did not make each inconvenience enjoyable.

McGonagall checked our preparations regularly. In the workroom on an upper floor, she once asked us to demonstrate how we would obtain help. Hermione explained where she would go, and I added written details before McGonagall produced a folded piece of message parchment paired with one she would keep.

A detachable corner held back a written message until torn; breaking it sent the words to the counterpart and sounded an alert. She demonstrated on a separate test sheet, letting us hear the sharp chime as our words appeared on her copy. The unused sheet remained intact while she explained its limit.

‘It conveys a message. It doesn’t bring me here,’ she said. We should write where we were and what happened, without waiting to diagnose an injury ourselves. Hermione put the unused sheet in a stiff cover after I wrote the workroom’s location on it. Imagining needing it made the preparation feel considerably less like a library exercise.

Meals remained awkward despite Pomfrey keeping me fed. I missed biting into an apple, eating toast and drinking without attending to the wrong thing in my mouth. At night the leaf seemed harder and larger, and I lay listening to the others breathe while trying not to move it with my tongue.

Sometimes I wanted to spit it out enough for starting again to sound reasonable. Morning brought another square crossed off in my notebook, helping me decide I could manage one more day. Pomfrey still refused to accept merely uncomfortable as a complete answer to her questions. I began giving her the useful details first, which shortened the visits without making her check any less carefully.