Chapter 45 — Letters That Never Arrived

The Grangers were getting ready to leave. Hermione’s parents each held one of her bags, and neither seemed greatly improved by the prospect of cheaper books. I reached them before they reached the door and apologised. Mr Granger pointed out that I had not said the insult, but I told him it had still happened in my shop.

He thanked me for dealing with it. Mrs Granger asked after Emma, giving us something ordinary to discuss for a moment. I said she was much better and would be pleased to hear they had asked. Talking about somebody recovering from an illness seemed more useful than making another apology which could not change the afternoon.

Hermione glanced towards the signing table. Lockhart was arranging himself beside a stack of books while a photographer worked on his camera. She quietly admitted she had wanted to get a copy signed. When I said she still could, she shook her head and answered that she did not want to today.

I did not try to persuade her. We agreed to meet on the platform at the beginning of term, then I watched her leave with her parents. Lockhart continued smiling towards the camera while they went. Whatever pleasure Hermione had hoped to find in meeting him would have to wait for another occasion.

Ron introduced me properly to his family once I returned. Arthur Weasley shook my hand with enthusiasm, calling me Ken’s boy and saying he should have recognised me before Ron told him. Apparently, my father had possessed a gift for leaving people with nothing useful to say. Mrs Weasley added that this usually followed him saying quite enough himself.

Arthur began laughing, then stopped while looking at my face. I had seen that happen before: somebody remembered my father, found part of him in me and discovered that the memory came with a cost. Mrs Weasley touched her husband’s arm before turning the conversation towards their time at school with my parents.

‘We were so pleased when Ron told us you were friends,’ she said. ‘I wish you could have come to stay.’

I explained about Emma, though Ron had already told her. She asked after her recovery, listened while I assured her I would not have left otherwise and invited me another time. There would be room, she said. Ron’s expression suggested several thoughts about the available room, none of which he intended to voice in front of her.

His sister was Ginny. She managed a greeting, then looked at Harry and became much less interested in speaking. He smiled at her without seeming to notice how quickly she looked away. Before I could ask about the car, Tom appeared with Gilderoy Lockhart and the conversation acquired a more public character.

Lockhart was as polished in person as in the window. His robes looked expensive, his hair deliberate and his smile arrived before his greeting. He shook my hand with the confidence of someone certain that I would remember doing so. Tom had told him I attended Hogwarts, and he asked which year I would be entering.

‘Second, this September.’ I welcomed him to the shop, reminding myself that disliking a large photograph was no reason to be rude to its subject. His readers were buying books, and Tom had organised the occasion. ‘Tom handles the arrangements. He’s the person to ask if you need anything for the signing.’

‘Of course. What a happy coincidence.’ Lockhart put a hand on my shoulder and turned us towards the photographer before I understood what he intended. He announced that the young owner of Flourish and Blotts was a Hogwarts student, and that he would be joining me there as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.

A flash went off, followed by another while I was still blinking. The school list had meant exactly what I feared. I hoped there was somebody behind the publicity who could teach me how to survive an attack. It would be unfair to decide he could not merely because he knew where every camera stood, but the hope required some effort.

Mrs Weasley approached with a book and told him how much she enjoyed his work. Lockhart began answering while still looking towards the photographer. Then Ron said something beside me, and the author’s attention shifted between us. He asked whether we had all come together.

‘Ron’s my friend. His parents knew mine.’ Lockhart’s smile warmed at that. He offered a set of his books to the family with his compliments, and Mrs Weasley looked delighted. Ron seemed equally pleased, though I suspected the shortened shopping list interested him more than the author’s generosity.

She asked for signatures. Lockhart drew her towards the table, where more readers gathered as the assistants brought fresh stock forwards. The stacks diminished quickly. Ron watched for a little while, then leaned towards me and asked whether we could go somewhere else. Harry agreed before I had answered.

Mrs Weasley wanted to remain, and Arthur stayed with her. We arranged where to meet afterwards, then I told Tom where we would be and asked him to set aside my school books. He asked whether to put them on my account. I said I was beginning to suspect he enjoyed the phrase, and he replied that he only used it to prevent misunderstandings.

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The restaurant was a short walk away. I took Harry and Ron to a table by a window and waited until the waiter left before answering the question Ron had clearly carried from the bookshop. I had bought the places they had seen and this one. He looked round the busy room as though the furniture might confirm it.

‘The manager’s the same,’ I told him. ‘So is the food, which is the part I’m interested in now.’ Harry smiled, though his expression as he looked around differed from Ron’s. I left that alone and pushed a napkin across the table. ‘You’ve got soot behind your ear.’

He rubbed the wrong side, making Ron laugh. Floo powder, Ron explained; Harry’s first attempt had gone badly. He had stepped into the Weasleys’ fireplace, tried to say Diagon Alley through a mouthful of ash and arrived somewhere else. When Harry named Knockturn Alley, I remembered the glass eye following me round Borgin’s shop.

‘Hagrid found me,’ he said. ‘I was very glad to see him.’ I told him I was glad too, without adding another description of places he might have reached if Hagrid had not appeared.

Ron explained the connected fireplaces and green flames, with particular emphasis on speaking the destination clearly. It sounded convenient once one removed the possibility of a wrong syllable producing a very unpleasant walk. Harry suggested I buy into the powder business, since everyone must need it. I admitted that I had already asked, which made Ron grin.

The name I had been given was Floo-Pow. The company kept its formula, the supply was closely controlled and nobody I had approached could point me towards an office where I might make an offer. Every price I had been quoted was two Sickles a scoop. Possessing money had not produced a person willing to discuss selling the business.

‘Copies are supposed to be dangerous,’ I added. ‘I’d rather buy lunch than find out why.’ The food arrived before Ron could suggest anything else for me to acquire. I waited until Harry had eaten before asking about the missing letters.

His fork stopped above the plate. ‘You were writing?’ he asked. I told him I had been, and so had Hermione. Ron watched him from across the table while Harry began to say what he had thought, then changed his mind.

‘Dobby took them,’ he said. The name meant nothing to me, and I asked who Dobby was. ‘A house-elf. He came to Privet Drive and told me I mustn’t return to Hogwarts.’

That was not the explanation I had expected. I had read about house-elves at school, but knew little about one appearing in a Muggle home to decide where somebody else should be educated. Harry said Dobby had warned him about terrible things happening at Hogwarts. Whenever he asked for details, the elf refused, sometimes hurting himself for having said anything at all.

Ron looked grim as Harry described Dobby striking his head against objects, apologising and refusing to leave. Harry turned his fork over without returning to the food.

‘He had the letters,’ he said. ‘He wanted me to think I had no reason to go back. I thought all of you had just stopped writing.’

I looked down at the napkin beneath my hand. While we had been trying to reach him, Harry had thought we had forgotten him. I told him the silence had worried us, and that Hermione kept asking after him too. His hand relaxed a little beside the plate.

‘Then he ruined Uncle Vernon’s dinner,’ Harry continued. ‘There were guests. An important deal.’ Dobby had used magic to drop the pudding on one of them. The Dursleys had blamed Harry, who could not explain the disaster in a way his uncle would accept. His room became a prison, and returning to school something Vernon intended to prevent.

‘So we fetched him,’ Ron said. I told him I was glad they had, and he answered with a short nod. Whatever I thought of taking the car, I had seen Harry walking out of the bookshop with us. That mattered more than finding a clever remark about how they had managed it.

I asked whether Dobby had named the family he served. Harry shook his head. Ron explained that house-elves were supposed to obey their masters, and some old families had been served by the same elves for generations. A master could free one with a gift of clothing, although Ron said most elves would hate being dismissed that way.

‘Most isn’t all,’ I said. I kept thinking about Dobby punishing himself between attempts to warn Harry. I could not tell how much of that came from fear, habit or magic binding him to somebody. Any of them might explain why he could begin a warning and struggle to finish it.

‘His owner might have sent him,’ Ron suggested. ‘To frighten Harry.’ I agreed it was possible, then pointed out that acting behind his owner’s back might also explain the stops and self-punishment. We did not know enough about the household to choose between them.

‘I think he was trying to help,’ Harry said. I told him he had a terrible method, which produced a brief laugh with very little amusement in it. Harry looked at his plate, and Ron leaned forwards before lowering his voice.

‘Could it be Voldemort again?’ he asked. The name made the restaurant’s noise seem more distant. I said I did not know. Dobby had given us too little to identify a culprit, although his determination to keep Harry away from school was something we should remember when we arrived.

Harry put down his fork. ‘I want to go back,’ he said. ‘I’m not letting him stop me.’

After the year I had just had, I was poorly placed to tell somebody to obey a warning he disliked. I asked Harry to tell us if Dobby appeared again, and he promised he would. We stayed until the plates were cleared and Ron began examining the pudding menu. By the time we left, the busiest crowds had started thinning outside.

Harry walked beside me for a little while without speaking. Then he said he wanted somewhere of his own one day. I asked whether he meant a shop, and he shook his head. A house, after Hogwarts, if he could make something of Quidditch.

‘Somewhere I don’t have to wait for somebody to decide whether I can stay.’ He glanced towards Ron ahead of us. ‘The Weasleys are brilliant. It isn’t about them.’

I told him I understood. He seemed relieved not to have to defend the wish, and we went back for the books. Before leaving Diagon Alley, I collected Leo and his equipment from the owl shop. The bird inspected Harry and Ron, then fixed on me with the same suspicion he had displayed that morning.

‘He looks friendly,’ Ron observed. I said he was still considering his options, and we arranged to meet on the train before parting. Harry went with the Weasleys. I carried Leo’s cage towards the Leaky Cauldron, thinking about letters hidden where their intended reader could never find them. Having an owl of my own suddenly felt more important than another crossed-off item on the list.