Chapter 137 — A Place to Wait

I led Buckbeak along the outer strip of forest, where the trunks left enough room for his folded wings. Hermione carried the loose coil so it would not drag, and Harry went a few paces ahead to check each opening before waving us through. We walked at Buckbeak’s pace until my shoulder demanded an even slower one.

After the next root I stopped and let Buckbeak come beside me. Guiding the chain had become a steady ache, and changing the angle of my arm no longer helped.

‘Can I take it?’ Harry asked. He waited while I looked at Buckbeak, keeping his hands clear of the links.

‘Let him see you first.’ I stepped aside so Harry could move into the hippogriff’s view, bow and wait for the answering gesture. Only then did I pass him the leading length.

The relief made me realise how long I had been holding my breath. I thanked him while Hermione gathered the coil, and Harry looked down at his shoes before taking his first careful step backwards.

‘Tell him to wait until we’re finished before he eats them,’ he said. Buckbeak picked his way past a root without acknowledging the request.

We followed the curve of the forest instead of the path where Hagrid would be searching. Through gaps I could see the rise that had hidden Ron from him, and the Willow beyond it with its lower branches moving against the darkening ground. Nobody was visible beneath them; I remembered the narrow opening and the tunnel, where our other selves should be walking now.

Behind a fallen beech we found a shallow fold in the ground with room for Buckbeak. Someone at the Willow would have to come into the trees to see us properly, and there was a wider way out behind us between two standing trunks. I checked that it remained clear round the bend before calling the others in.

‘Here for now,’ I said. Harry stopped Buckbeak while Hermione laid the spare links on the earth. We left them loose instead of winding them around a tree; a frightened animal’s pull was the last thing I wanted deciding how quickly we could leave.

I crouched at the beech until I could see the Willow’s roots. ‘Lupin will be holding Peter when they come out,’ I told them. ‘Peter changes before we’ve got Ron under cover.’

‘He runs that way.’ Harry knelt beside me and pointed towards the grass between the Willow and the forest.

‘That’s where I lost sight of him. We don’t know which gap he’ll use after that.’ I moved my head to test how much the low branches hid. There was more empty space than I liked, even knowing roughly where to look.

‘I can try to immobilise him if I get a clear view,’ Hermione said. She came beside us to inspect the gap, wand in hand.

‘From here,’ I agreed. ‘Nobody runs into the clearing. Snape will be trying to stop Lupin, and I don’t want him seeing another one of us behind him with a wand.’

She nodded and pointed out a gap beside a low root for herself. Harry took the next one, within sight of both of us; then Hermione bowed to Buckbeak before taking the leading chain from him. The hippogriff returned the gesture and eventually folded his forelegs beneath him, though he kept his head up.

I sat against the fallen tree where I could watch the space between their positions. We had a chance to try, which was more than I could have offered Harry at the fence. It was still a long way from having a prisoner.

Hermione touched my sleeve when a figure came down from the castle. Lupin crossed to the Willow without looking towards us, stopped its branches and disappeared beneath the roots. We watched the opening until Snape followed over the same ground with one hand near the front of his robe.

‘The bottle,’ Harry said. His eyes stayed on the empty gap after Snape had gone through it.

I nodded. Harry had given McGonagall his account, but he still had to speak to Snape himself when we returned. There was nothing I could add from behind this tree that would make the walk into the Shack end differently for either of them.

For a while we listened to water moving somewhere in the wood and Buckbeak scraping the earth before settling again. A branch tapped another in the wind, an ordinary sound that made me look round each time it happened. Harry finally turned from the clearing towards Hermione.

‘How did you get permission for it?’ he asked. She looked at the chain in her hand before realising he meant the one beneath her collar.

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‘McGonagall arranged it. There were forms, and promises about using it only for lessons.’ Hermione adjusted the loose links so they would not pull on Buckbeak’s neck. ‘She explained the restrictions more than once. She was responsible for trusting me with it.’

‘And tonight?’ Harry asked. He looked towards the castle, where Dumbledore was still living through the hours before he would send us back.

‘He knows what we’re doing. It doesn’t mean I can use it for anything I like afterwards.’ She let go of the spare coil and kept only the leading chain in her hand.

I thought of the unfinished work in Snape’s notebook. Three more hours might leave room for an experiment, but I would still have to live through the work before the day ended. My shoulder was giving a thorough demonstration of the difference between finding more time and having more energy.

‘I should probably finish the hours I’ve already got,’ I said. Hermione gave a small, tired smile, and we returned to watching the clearing.

Harry turned his wand between his fingers. ‘He stood in front of us,’ he said after a while. ‘Then he told them what Peter said, even after I’d attacked him.’

‘Yes.’ I watched his hand slow over the wood. He had used the same wand to signal for help beside the pool, and it seemed to be occupying more of his attention now than either spell had taken at the time.

‘I still don’t know what to say to him,’ Harry admitted. He laid the wand across his knees, within reach but no longer moving.

‘Start with what happened.’ I looked at him when he objected that Snape already knew. ‘He should hear that you know too.’

Harry’s hand went still, and I left it there. Snape had known my father in ways I could only reach through old notes and pieces of conversation; whatever had happened between him and Harry’s father was not something I could fill in because I had watched him protect us once.

The Willow remained quiet. After a while Harry glanced at Hermione’s collar again and asked whether the Time-Turner could take someone further back.

‘I’ve only used it for hours,’ she said. Harry began to ask about continuing to turn the glass, and she tightened her grip on Buckbeak’s chain. ‘I don’t know how to make it take anyone years into the past. That isn’t what I was given it for.’

He looked at me, then down at the bark beside his knee. ‘My parents,’ he said, quietly enough that I nearly asked him to repeat it. ‘I keep thinking about what you said. People you want to come back to. What if I could get to them before—’

The rest of the sentence would not come. Hermione moved closer without letting go of the chain, and I looked towards the clearing so he would not have to find the words while both of us watched him.

‘We got Buckbeak out,’ Harry said. ‘Why can’t there be a way to do that for them?’

I remembered the jar breaking after the stone left my hand. One frightening repetition had told me very little about time, and I wished I knew enough to give him an answer that could survive being thought about afterwards.

‘We never saw Buckbeak die,’ I said. ‘We heard the axe and thought we knew what it meant.’

‘So this was always what happened?’ Harry looked back at the hippogriff, who had lowered his beak towards one folded wing.

‘The stones were ours. That part fits.’ I watched Buckbeak settle his feathers before adding, ‘I don’t know how much else it tells us.’

The strange memories inside my own head offered no useful explanation. I had lived with them for years without discovering exactly how they had come to belong to me; travelling through one afternoon twice did not suddenly explain my whole life. I could imagine theories, but Harry needed more than a guess spoken confidently because I disliked having no answer.

‘I wish I knew how to reach them,’ Hermione said. Her free hand rested beside his on the fallen trunk. ‘But nobody’s taught me how to take this back twelve years. I don’t know how to do what you’re asking.’

Harry ran his thumb along a split in the bark. ‘It feels as though there ought to be a way,’ he said, and I told him I understood. I could not bring myself to pretend that understanding made it easier.

‘Sirius is still here,’ I added. ‘We’ve got a chance to bring him out tonight.’

For a while he said nothing. I watched the gaps we had chosen, leaving him room to be quiet without deciding his silence meant the question had gone away. Then he turned towards Hermione.

‘He asked me to live with him,’ Harry said. ‘If we got his name cleared. Before Lupin changed.’ He glanced at me, and I nodded; I remembered his hands tightening in my mane when he had first told me.

‘Would you want to?’ Hermione asked. She stayed beside him as he answered yes, with the same certainty he had shown between the trees.

‘Somewhere outside a town, perhaps. With room to fly.’ Harry looked towards the castle. ‘I’d like to show him the brooms. Things he missed.’

His voice caught on the last word. Hermione waited while he wiped his face with the heel of his hand, and I kept looking through my gap towards the Willow.

‘Somewhere you could all come,’ he added. ‘Ron could ring without having to shout over Uncle Vernon.’

‘I’d like that.’ The small smile that returned to Harry’s mouth made the place he was describing seem closer, though neither of us knew where it might be. I let him keep the thought while I checked the route behind our tree again.

Hermione touched my arm. ‘The howl,’ she whispered. ‘The one that made Lupin leave you. I think I can make that sound.’

I remembered his head turning and the speed with which he had vanished between the trunks. Behind the beech, our wider route ran past the two standing trees before bending out of sight. We would need every part of that space if he came to investigate.

‘He’ll run towards it,’ I said. ‘Harry, when it’s time, take Buckbeak down the wider way. Keep him moving round the bend. Hermione, make the call here and follow him straight away.’

‘Don’t wait to see whether it works,’ she said. She looked from the route to my shoulder, and I nodded.

‘I’ll be behind you.’ I checked the pouch at my belt, making sure I could reach the strap. ‘If he catches up, I’ll keep him away long enough for you to move.’