Chapter 49 — The Red Envelope

Colin Creevey reached Harry before the owl did. He stood beside our table with a camera held in both hands, looking as though he had rehearsed an introduction and now feared he might forget it. Harry put down his fork and waited. Ron continued peeling a loose corner of Spellotape from his wand, taking advantage of a problem which belonged to somebody else.

‘Hello. I’m Colin Creevey,’ the boy said. ‘We’re in the same house.’ Harry replied that he had seen him in the common room, and Colin’s face brightened. Apparently being recognised had improved the conversation beyond anything he had planned. He moved closer and began explaining about the photographs he wanted to send home.

His father was a milkman. Nobody in his family had expected the Hogwarts letter, and Colin had found it difficult to explain what the school was like. He had taken pictures, but ordinary views of the castle could only tell them so much. Then his attention returned to Harry, with a hopeful glance towards the space where somebody might stand beside him.

‘Could one of your friends take it?’ he asked. He offered the camera towards me before Harry had answered. I kept my hands on the table, watching Harry’s fingers tighten round his fork. Something which seemed a pleasant souvenir to Colin was evidently less welcome from our side of the bench.

‘I’d rather not,’ Harry said. Colin asked whether they could take just one, and Harry shook his head. ‘Not now. Sorry.’ His voice stayed gentle, but he did not get up. Colin lowered the camera and managed a disappointed nod before returning to the younger students.

Ron watched him go. He remarked that Colin was only a year below us and spoke as though Harry had fought his way to lunch past a dragon. Harry did not smile. He turned his fork over, then set it beside the plate rather than pretending he still wanted to eat.

‘I didn’t do anything people think I did,’ he said quietly. ‘When I was a baby, I mean. Mum died. I don’t want a photograph every time somebody remembers it.’ The conversation around us carried on, keeping his words at our end of the table. I was glad nobody nearby seemed to have heard.

‘You don’t owe anybody a picture,’ I told him. He nodded and picked up his fork again. I could understand Colin wanting to show his family someone famous, but that did not oblige Harry to make the story pleasant for him. For a little while, we went back to lunch without looking towards the camera.

The owl arrived at an angle I recognised. It had visited during the summer, and I knew enough about its landings to move my glass. Ron was less fortunate. The bird struck a jug, rebounded into a plate of chips and came to rest with one wing spread across the remains of his meal.

Dean suggested that somebody let it retire. Ron checked the owl before beginning to remove the letter, while I rescued the jug and moved what remained inside beyond its reach. There was laughter farther along the table. Then Ron saw the envelope properly and stopped pulling at the string.

‘A Howler,’ Seamus said, leaning forward. The word travelled more efficiently than an ordinary letter could have done, attracting attention from people who had been discussing their own business a moment earlier. Ron released the envelope as though it had become hot. It lay beside his plate, a particularly unpleasant shade of red.

I asked what it did. Hermione explained the general idea, while Neville looked at it with a sympathy which suggested personal experience. Ron said nothing at all. I considered the distance to the doors, wondering whether we could manage a quieter place before his mother began addressing the table.

‘Open it,’ Neville advised. ‘I left one from Gran once. That made it worse.’ A thin curl of smoke rose from a corner while I suggested the corridor. Neville shook his head at the idea of going all the way upstairs, and Ron glanced towards the benches blocking the nearest route out. Any attempt to leave would now have an audience.

He broke the seal. Molly Weasley’s voice filled the Hall before I had finished moving my plate, and the envelope unfolded into a mouth above the table. I had heard her speak firmly in Diagon Alley. That had given me little preparation for being close enough to inspect the paper teeth while she explained what she thought of the car.

She had received the school’s letter. Arthur was facing an investigation at the Ministry, and Ron was being asked whether he had considered anyone beyond himself before flying across the country. Harry sat rigid beside him. His mouth opened on an apology which vanished beneath the next sentence, leaving him staring at a letter that could not hear him.

Molly’s anger had plenty of room for fear. She demanded to know why arriving late had seemed worse than taking that risk, and made it clear that further trouble could bring Ron home. He nodded at the envelope as though she might somehow see. Then the mouth turned towards Ginny and congratulated her on being sorted into Gryffindor.

The sudden warmth was delivered at almost the same extraordinary volume. Ginny covered her face, and the letter gave a final shudder before tearing itself into smoking fragments. They fell among Ron’s ruined chips. For a moment the Hall was silent enough that I heard somebody put down a spoon.

Laughter began farther along the benches. Malfoy was enjoying himself visibly, but I had little right to consider his behaviour when I was pressing my own lips together. The congratulations kept returning to me in the middle of the threats. A laugh escaped through my nose, and Hermione’s attempt to hide hers made my next effort worse.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

‘Go on, then,’ Ron said, looking at the three of us. ‘You’re going to burst something.’ We laughed briefly and helplessly. When I recovered, the owl was still beside his plate, and he was left with the remains of lunch and a room full of people who had heard his mother shout. I wished I had managed another few seconds of self-control.

I apologised. Ron said he was glad somebody had enjoyed it and began moving the ash away with the edge of a spoon. I helped clear the things the owl had overturned. Telling him it would soon stop being embarrassing seemed a poor idea; I could remember too clearly what it felt like to be displayed for everybody else’s benefit.

In my other life, something I had written at school had once been read aloud before an audience I would have preferred to avoid. The details were blurred beside another childhood, but the heat in my face remained unpleasantly clear. I could recall that feeling without making it Ron’s job to listen to my story. He had already heard enough voices explaining his day to him.

That afternoon I went through the sweets in my trunk. I brought the things he liked downstairs and put them beside his unfinished exercise, saying they were for laughing at lunch. He opened a packet and suggested I could have brought them because we were hungry. When I admitted that I was, he pushed it towards me.

We ate while he worked through the written task his damaged wand had left him. The sweets did not replace the wand or repair Arthur’s car. They did make it easier to sit beside each other without finding another apology, and Ron eventually made a complaint about the envelope on his own. I let him choose when it became funny again.

Saturday morning found us looking for somewhere to work. Our old room contained stored furniture and a timetable pinned beside the door, neither of which improved when Hermione checked a second time. We tried other doors and discovered that an empty classroom could still be unavailable. By the time she suggested a bathroom on the second floor, Ron had begun to suspect that the search itself was our experiment.

He stopped outside when he saw which bathroom it was. Hermione said hardly anyone used it. Ron pointed out that this did not resolve every objection to three boys taking boxes inside, and I looked past her before adding my opinion. The room was cold, with tarnished mirrors, basins and enough clear stone beside the windows for our equipment.

‘We look first,’ I said. ‘If somebody’s using it, we leave.’ Hermione called into the room and waited. There was no answer, so we carried the boxes inside without unpacking the ingredients. It was less inviting than our old room, but at least there was water and no class preparing to arrive.

Before we began, I asked Harry and Ron to sit where they could hear me. Hermione understood and left her bag closed. I explained that there were two things I had brought back from the forest last year, and that I had told her on the train. I should have told them sooner too.

Harry’s attention sharpened at the unicorn. I described the blood, the horn appearing in my hand and the promise I had made beside the dying animal. I made myself include wanting the materials before I understood what accepting them might mean. Leaving that out would have been an easy way to make the story sound more flattering.

‘We haven’t used either,’ Hermione said. ‘We need to establish whether the blood is still suitable for any preparation.’ I explained why she was keeping both things for me, apart from the other materials. We would agree what to do before trying anything, and nobody was going to drink the blood. Harry listened without interrupting, which did not make the explanation comfortable.

‘You could have told us,’ he said when I finished. I admitted that I knew, and he added that I could have done it even without deciding how to use them. There was no useful answer to that except agreement. I had asked him to leave room for help after the car, while keeping something important out of reach of my own friends.

Ron asked whether the promise meant I had to find Voldemort. I repeated what I had actually said, then separated it from the things I feared it might require. We did not know how the unicorn’s gift worked, or whether the magic understood my words as I did. Hermione kept the bottle and wrapped horn in her bag. Taking them out would add little to what the boys needed to hear.

Harry gave her the rest of the Dobby story in return. She already knew about the blocked barrier, but the intercepted letters, the warning and the elf hurting himself gave her more to consider. She said the connection made him worth asking without proving who had sent him. I added that we did not yet know whether anybody had sent him at all.

We turned to the equipment with fewer secrets between us. I set out the jointed practice figures and opened the notes I had worked on over the summer. I wanted to spread our existing binding effect across a small space. Sketches made that look simple, especially when I could move a boundary by drawing another line. The prepared paper would be less forgiving.

Harry and Ron placed the targets and measured the gaps. Hermione checked the notes and made an ordinary batch of ink while I arranged the treated sheets I would need. The inscription and charge remained my part of the work. We agreed to clear the space between attempts, with Hermione lifting any successful bindings before Ron tested the joints.

My first fresh strip bound one figure. I had thrown it and spoken the charm as usual, but the second target moved freely when Ron checked it. Hermione then freed the first. On the next attempt both figures stiffened, then yielded at the joints. I recorded a failure rather than awarding myself half a success for something which would not hold.

I studied the outer strokes again. With the figures closer together, the third fresh preparation locked both, and I felt myself grin before we had finished checking. Hermione stopped Harry from changing the arrangement until she had recorded the distance. Then we widened the gap for a fourth attempt. Only the nearer figure held.

Four spent preparations had bought us a boundary worth testing again. The spread was short, weak at its edge and unable to distinguish a friend from a second target. I drew round the arrangement which had worked, keeping the failures beside it in the notes. This could become useful against a small group, provided everyone I wanted moving stayed well clear.

Something sobbed behind us. Ron turned sharply enough to knock a ruler from the bench, and a girl with thick glasses floated through a cubicle door. Her eyes moved over the boxes and figures before settling on us. We had asked whether anybody was there, but apparently we had failed to ask the question which mattered to her.

‘Nobody asks whether I want company,’ she said. I put down my brush as she drifted closer, beginning to understand why the bathroom had been so easy to obtain. Finding somewhere empty was proving simpler than finding somewhere that belonged to nobody.