Chapter 81 — A Light That Stayed

McGonagall tapped her goblet once the last patients had settled. Dumbledore stood and thanked Sprout, Pomfrey and the people who had helped care for the injured and bring them home. I joined the applause with my good hand against my sleeve, watching Hermione reach for a dish she could finally serve herself.

Then Dumbledore called our names. Four trophies waited on a small table beside him, and Ron almost caught his foot on the bench getting up.

Hermione walked beside me to the front, with Harry and Ron behind us. Dumbledore described what each award recognised: Hermione’s identification of the creature, the route Harry had opened, Ron’s help in the expedition and rescue. When he turned to me, I looked at the engraved plate instead of the hall.

He named the basilisk’s death plainly. He named the destruction of the diary through which Riddle had been taking Ginny’s life, and said I had accomplished both. Hearing it beside a polished trophy, with hundreds of people applauding, was so different from remembering the floor that I needed a moment to take what he held out.

Dumbledore also thanked Luna for bringing forward the evidence she had noticed. I found her at the Ravenclaw table, where she raised her hand a little, as though we had met unexpectedly in a corridor. I smiled back before Hermione nudged me towards our seats.

Ron carried his trophy in both hands. Fred asked for a look, and Ron told him he could see it perfectly well from where he was.

‘It won’t evaporate,’ George said, leaning past his brother. Ron turned the engraved side towards himself and asked whether either of them had one.

Fred opened his mouth, then shut it. ‘We may have to let him have this evening,’ he told George, who looked as though he was already considering tomorrow.

The doors opened again before Dumbledore could continue. Hagrid stood in the entrance, scrubbed and tired, his hair still damp from whatever effort had gone into making him ready for dinner. Harry called his name and half rose from the bench.

Hagrid came straight to us. He looked at Hermione first, then at the three of us, and swallowed before telling Ron that his letter had arrived that morning.

‘Errol looked like he needed a holiday,’ he added. Ron went red and apologised, but Hagrid shook his head. ‘Don’t be sorry. Was good ter get it.’

He turned towards me, gripping the back of an empty chair. ‘Minerva told me what happened in the Forest. I owe yeh an apology. Thought Aragog would listen if yeh said I sent yeh.’

Ron said that Aragog had listened. Hagrid winced and admitted that McGonagall had told him that part too, his fingers tightening on the chair until I wondered whether it would survive the conversation.

I stood carefully and took his offered hand. ‘Welcome home,’ I said, and his eyes shone as he closed both hands around mine.

He thanked each of us before moving towards the staff table. The applause followed him, growing louder as people stood, and I sat down beside Hermione with the welcome still catching in my throat.

Dumbledore waited until Hagrid was seated before announcing that the school’s own end-of-year examinations would not be held. Teachers would assess our work in lessons while we recovered the ground lost during the attacks. The Ministry’s examinations for fifth- and seventh-years remained unchanged, which produced two very different reactions along the Gryffindor table.

Ron looked at Harry as though he needed confirmation before celebrating. Harry supplied it loudly, and Hermione leaned towards me so I could hear her over them.

‘I’ve already started a revision timetable.’ She sounded personally inconvenienced by our good fortune. I suggested she could still learn the things on it, and she gave me a look which explained that I had misunderstood the entire purpose of a timetable.

She was smiling when she turned back to dinner. I decided against pointing it out and passed her the dish she had been reaching for before the announcements.

That night, Fred and George produced a small barrel of ginger beer. Percy checked that it contained exactly what they claimed before allowing it near the table, and I helped make a bowl of fruit punch while Ron permitted three people to hold his trophy under close supervision. For the first time in weeks, nobody stopped talking whenever the portrait hole opened.

The next morning’s newspaper announced that Lucius Malfoy had resigned from the board of governors. The article used the word several times; after what I had heard in the hospital, I suspected it was covering a rather less dignified departure. It said nothing which would settle what he had known about the diary.

Draco became quieter for a while. He still looked at our end of the table as though we had put it in his way deliberately, but the easy habit of behaving as though his father owned the school had gone. I could live with that much improvement without expecting an apology.

Lockhart did not return to teach us. McGonagall said he was being assessed at St Mungo’s while the Ministry investigated the accounts of people whose work and memories he had taken. Nobody could yet tell us how much he would recover, and she stopped the questions there.

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At our next Defence lesson, Dumbledore walked in carrying a small stack of books. We waited for him to introduce whoever was following, until he closed the door himself and set the books on the desk.

‘Until we have made a permanent appointment, I shall take responsibility for these lessons. Some of my colleagues will help where the timetable requires it.’ He took out his wand and looked around the room. ‘Today, I should like to discover what you can actually do.’

Ron glanced at me, and I tried not to smile too obviously. There were still months before June. For the first time since I had learnt there was such a subject, that seemed like time we might use properly.

Dumbledore put a chair between himself and the class, then asked where the nearest exits were. Several people pointed towards the door we used every week. He waited until somebody noticed the other one before arranging us in pairs to move round an obstacle while keeping sight of one another.

‘A shield may fail,’ he said, moving the chair after we had grown comfortable with it. ‘An exit is useful even when your spell succeeds.’ Harry glanced at me, and I kept my attention on the route past the desk.

During my first week back, I watched the duelling and practised the movements without casting at anyone. Dumbledore knew Pomfrey’s restrictions before I could explain them. Ron used a school wand under supervision and returned it after each lesson, then put his own taped wand back in his pocket with considerably less enthusiasm.

The lessons grew from there: disarming from an angle, noticing when a partner had lost balance, breaking off a spell instead of pouring more effort into something which was failing. A small correction from Dumbledore could make a page of my notes obsolete. I started leaving space beside the diagrams.

He also asked what had made the tunnels difficult. Ron answered that everything had, which Dumbledore accepted before asking him to choose something we could practise in the classroom.

‘Seeing,’ I said, remembering the lantern and the place where Harry’s footsteps had gone the wrong way. Dumbledore looked at my brush and suggested that we begin there.

Lumos had been one of the first spells I had failed to perform. Nothing had answered properly with the old wands, and once I had found a method that worked, I had been much more interested in shields and forces capable of breaking a door. I had spent plenty of time preparing to hit things I might not be able to see.

Dumbledore stayed after class to watch me prepare a strip. He asked which parts of the inscription controlled the release, allowing me to explain the marks instead of pretending that he could read them all. Then he cleared a stretch of desk for the attempt.

I threw the first piece and spoke the spell. Its ink darkened without producing any light, so I moved the spent paper aside and examined the next preparation before releasing it with another ‘Lumos.’ That one gave a white flash which made Ron shut his eyes.

‘You released everything at once,’ Dumbledore observed. I told him that was usually the intention, and he pointed to the flash’s dark remains. ‘For a push, perhaps. Here, you want something to continue after it begins.’

I compared the burnt line with the part of the inscription which had survived. The third attempt, thrown and called like the others, produced a pale glow before failing at a corner in the mark. I was ready to blame the paper when Dumbledore asked me to draw the same section on an ordinary sheet, without charging it.

Under his finger, the hurried turn looked less convincing than it had under mine. I drew it again, more slowly, then prepared a fourth piece with the care I would have given a shield I intended to stand behind.

‘Lumos.’ The strip landed flat on the desk, and a small circle of light spread across the wood. Ron leaned forwards, keeping his hands away as we watched it shine for several breaths. Then the charge ran out, leaving the paper curled and dark beneath the fading glow.

Ron said it was quite good. I was still looking at the desk when I told him it would be better if it lasted longer, and he pointed out that it would be worse if it did not work at all.

Dumbledore smiled and told me to record both the success and its limits. I wrote down the four pieces it had cost to reach it, the light’s position and the short time before it failed. It did not float or follow me; if I needed it somewhere else, I would have to aim there.

Further practice cost more paper. This time, however, I could compare the results with something I had actually made work, instead of another blank space where a light ought to have been.

In the workshop, I sorted what had come back from the Chamber. The brush was sound, and the map opened and folded normally despite the damaged crease. Several of the rescued strips were too distorted to trust. I separated them from the usable preparations and wrote down what I knew had been consumed.

Hermione watched me move another doubtful piece into the rejected pile. ‘You’re actually throwing some away,’ she said, turning it to examine the bent inscription.

I threaded a needle for the pouch’s new fastening loop. ‘I’ve discovered a persuasive argument against finding a fault while something is trying to bite me.’ She set the piece down and helped check the others while I sewed. Wanting to save the paper would not make a damaged preparation reliable.

We also spoke to Pomfrey before she returned Hermione’s bag. The bottle and horn stayed sealed, with the bottle upright in a padded inner compartment; Hermione agreed to continue looking after them while we worked out what could safely be learnt from the materials. I collected the chipped mirror at the same visit and slid it into its case. The glass still gave back my face, which was more than I had expected to see again when I had lent it.

A few days after Pomfrey lifted the last restrictions, Luna and I went for our promised walk. We kept to the path near the greenhouses, where our breath showed in the cold and fallen leaves had collected against the stone edging.

Luna told me I did not have to keep thanking her for the paper. ‘I was going to thank you for coming,’ I said, slowing beside her at a patch of mud.

‘That seems more sensible. I did choose to do that.’ She stepped round the mud, and I followed, smiling at the back of her hat until she turned to ask about my classes.

We talked about hers too, and the greenhouse windows which misted at different heights. A bird she had been trying to identify became less mysterious when it landed close enough for us both to see it. We stopped to watch it hop along the edging, leaving the conversation unfinished without either of us needing to rescue it.

She did not ask me to describe the basilisk’s mouth. When the bird flew away, we walked on together, and for a little while I could hear footsteps beside mine without listening for something following us.