15: Mysteries Afloat

Harry didn't interrupt Hagrid as he poured out his tale of the Halloween night when the Potters were killed, though Ron asked occasional questions. Harry simply remained slumped in the chair, gazing off blankly as though he weren't listening at all, or even capable of listening for that matter. About midway through the story, Harry finally developed the motivation to sit up more comfortably; as Hagrid had surmised, he simply wasn't concerned about anything as mundane as a wry neck prior to that.

"I heard the Muggles comin' closer, so I had to leave yer poor mum an' get back out to Sirius. I tol' him yeh'd be better off in a cozy bed in the castle, an' we could settle out the details later,'cause I din't know at the time that Dumbledore was givin' yeh to the Dursleys an' all. Sirius jus' kept huggin' yeh and sayin', 'Yer right, but I don' wanna give him up, I'm all he's got now,' along them lines. An' he said he had to take care of summat and did I, did I... did I want ter take the motorbike to bring yeh back to Hogwarts. He said he din't need it anymore." Hagrid scowled and scratched his head. "There was another thing but I can't think of it at the mo... at the mo." He jumped with a shiver. "Scuse me, Harry, I think someone jus' stepped over me grave."

Harry's eyes were still blank, but his voice contained a hint of his usual demeanor. "Keep going, Hagrid, please."

Hagrid frowned again as he collected his thoughts. "Well, that was mostly it, I reckon. Sirius gave yer little head a big kiss g'bye an' did a charm on the bike so's it'd fit me, an' he took off. I spent a few seconds figurin' out how to start an' stop the bloody thing, then I buzzed off to Privet Drive an' handed yeh to Dumbledore."

Ron began to fidget in his seat uncomfortably. He glanced between Harry and Hagrid. Ron knew very well that this story did not agree with the reports from the Gamidges or Uther. Yet Ron also knew that Hagrid was an inept liar, and he was not showing any of his usual giveaways when he fibbed. Either Hagrid believed this story, or within the last half hour he'd developed a talent for deception that had eluded him all his life.

Harry said nothing for some time, just stared blankly at Hagrid. Ron wondered what he might be thinking. It was rather like a picture he'd seen once, in a Muggle book in his Dad's old office: a black and white image of a fancy candlestick, but if you stared at it long enough, it suddenly became a white-and-black image of two faces (knowing that Muggle pictures didn't move, that effect had impressed Ron greatly). One minute Harry looked as though he would shout at Hagrid in rage, then he would suddenly appear deeply hurt, or on the verge of cynical laughter--all the while never moving a muscle. Ron began to hope Harry would just snap out of the trance and get the confrontation over and done.

"You're certain it happened as you said, Hagrid?" Harry finally said quietly.

"Tha's all I can remember, Harry. It was a long time ago, an' for years I thought Sirius was a traitor; did me bes' teh forget parts of it. Thought all his tears an' kisses for yeh were a big act, that sort o' thing." Hagrid settled back in his chair and took a relaxed draught of his tea.

"When you carried me out," Harry said slowly, "was my scar on my head?"

Hagrid glanced up in confusion. "Well, in a manner o' speakin--it was a wound still, yeh'd just got it, after all."

"A wound," said Harry. "Was it bleeding?"

"O' course. It was on yer head, after all; head wounds tend ter bleed pretty heavy."

"Yes," agreed Harry. "Think hard, Hagrid. When Sirius kissed me goodbye, did he get any blood on his face?"

Hagrid frowned hard, clearly put off by the very concept. "Not as I remember," he said, eyeing Harry quizzically.

"And when you handed me to Dumbledore, was there still blood on my head?"

Hagrid's jaw dropped, quickly followed by his shoulders; he began to shift his weight in the chair as though the seat had suddenly sprouted thorns. "I... I don't really... I don't think so, Harry. No. It was... it was already dry. Scabbed over." Hagrid passed the point of squirming and jumped up from his chair to pace. "It was dry an' all washed off, even yer little face was all wiped clean. But I didn't... I don't remember tidyin'... Aw, Sirius musta done it, he musta cleaned you up an' did some sorta healing charm..." Hagrid's voice drained away; Sirius might have had the presence of mind to try Healing the baby, but he was in no state to bother washing Harry's face.

"Did you speak to Professor McGonagall that night, Hagrid?" asked Harry.

"Did I?" Hagrid croaked. Fuzzy slippers and the scent of cucumber salad flashed through his mind, but it seemed to be part of another memory, unrelated... or was it? "Did I?" he asked again.

"We've all heard the story," said Ron. "McGonagall spent a whole day spying outside the Dursleys' house, Transfigured as a cat. She's always said that you told her you'd be meeting Dumbledore on Privet Drive at midnight."

Hagrid began to twist strands of his beard between fingers and thumb of both hands. "Well, now, tha's just impossible, innit, Ron? Harry? I din' know meself about the meetin' till Dumbledore sent me ter the Hollow, an' I came right from there to... to Privet Drive." He sat down suddenly, burying his face in his hands and rubbing his forehead firmly. "I went straight ter Privet Drive on the motorbike, an' the both of them were there, Dumbledore an' McGonagall, an' she even mentioned she'd spent the whole day there as a cat..." Hagrid dropped his hands to his lap, turning pale and wide eyed. "But she couldn'tve, could she? Because none of us ever heard about Privet Drive 'til late tha' night, af'er the attack. Besides, she was at the Halloween Feast, the elves told me, they'd fixed her the special pumpkin tarts she likes an' I fed the leftovers to the unicorns just before I went ter Dumbledore's office."

"You said you met Dumbledore at the main doors of the castle," said Ron gently.

"I did!" blustered Hagrid, growing agitated. "I met him in the blasted rain on the steps... but I also went to his... office? Din't I?"

"Come here to me, Hagrid," said Harry, with such command that it turned Ron's blood to ice water. Hagrid looked frightened, but he shuffled haltingly to Harry, who motioned him to sit on the floor.

"I think you believe what you have said, Hagrid," said Harry, finally focusing his gaze on the bearded, anxious face of the half-giant. "But I also think your memory has been compromised. I would know the truth, Hagrid. Forgive me for this." Without another word, Harry set his hand upon Hagrid's forehead and deliberately stepped into his mind.

Harry had seen a modified memory before, in Dumbledore's Penseive. Slughorn's reconfiguration of his talk with Tom Riddle about Horcruxes had been carelessly done, with an obvious substitution spliced over the part he wanted to hide. But whoever had altered Hagrid's memory had created a masterpiece. It was meticulous and detailed enough for Hagrid himself to mistake it for the truth for sixteen years. But although it had been done with exquisite attention to detail, it wasn't flawless, and despite Harry's rather limited experience as a Legilimagus, he knew this memory wasn't the genuine article.

Harry rolled through the events over and over, seeing points of discontinuity. Sirius's face went from clean to dirty to clean again. The background subtly changed from the pile of industrial rubble to what appeared to be a tree trunk. Sirius had disappeared abruptly, but there had been no crack of Apparation, no broom, no Portkey, no transformation into a mastiff, no footsteps. Like Everett Gamidge and the Ministry automobile, Hagrid might not be able to recall little details like the sound of steps or Apparating, but they should still be there in the province of weaker dendrites, a background detail too insignificant to drag into consciousness. However Sirius had departed, it had been clipped from Hagrid's memory with surgical precision.

Harry moved beyond the meeting on Privet Drive to the next day, and the next. His parents had been killed on a Monday night. Hagrid's imprint of the following days were dim, but present: he had returned to Hogwarts right after dropping off Baby Harry, and woke up tired but ready to work on Wednesday morning. There was no indication that Tuesday ever happened.

Harry had no idea how to break past the alteration, or if it were even possible. He was certain now that it was no fault of Hagrid's that his recollections of that time did not agree with eyewitness accounts. What Harry did not know was exactly whom had modified Hagrid's memory, what had happened during those missing twenty-four hours, or why any of this was done in the first place.

For the first time, Harry felt completely in control of his presence in another mind. He chose to pursue this one line of inquiry, and chose to step out without delving into any other train of thought. Which proved to be an excellent decision, as Ron was frantically attempting to break his connection to Hagrid, covering Harry's eyes with one hand and shaking his shoulders violently with the other.

"Please stop that, Ron," croaked Harry. His voice sounded so warped it startled Harry himself, despite a whole new layer of chilling calm enveloping him.

"Blimey, Harry!" roared Ron. "I thought you were at death's door, mate!" Harry could still see his friend's wild eyes, but once again slipped deep into the strange waking coma and could not answer. By then Hagrid had recovered his senses and put a somewhat shaky hand on Ron's shoulder.

"It's over now, Ron, he's done. It's okay," said Hagrid. "It's just as well, now yeh've seen him go gray like that, you'll be ready for it nex' time." Hagrid patted Ron and slumped back against the leg of the table wearily.

Harry heard the words and agreed completely, but he felt so light and unencumbered that he didn't even try to speak.

Harry woke up in his four-poster before the break of dawn. He remembered the night before: the farce of Hagrid attempting to put on the Invisibility Cloak and Ron's comment about being half the giant he used to be; the way they rolled him up, unresisting, in his cloak like a burrito; Hagrid practicing for twenty minutes, walking with Harry draped along his arm so that he would not appear to be holding anything; Ron tirelessly coaching him to say the line, "Just havin' a meetin' with one of my prefects, Mr. Filch." They'd pulled it off, even though Hagrid had slipped up and said "two of my prefects" when Filch inspected him, but apparently Hagrid's new status as a Head of House afforded even more leniency in Filch's eye. Ron had used the Levicorpus spell to haul Harry through Gryffindor tower after they made it to the Fat Lady. Aside from Hermione getting ruffled about their absence from her Charms homework session, the whole evening went off without a hitch.

Harry had focused enough to thank Ron for bringing him upstairs, then fell into a dreamless sleep. It was restful and refreshing, but unfortunately it took place about three hours before his normal bedtime. Hence Harry woke up far too early, with no desire to doze. Naturally, his thoughts turned immediately to Quidditch.

Fawkes warbled softly as Harry took up his Firebolt, but didn't seem interested in accompanying him for a flight. Probably wants to sleep some more, Harry thought with a chuckle, and sure enough, as he softly pulled the dormitory door shut behind him, he glanced back to catch the end of a wide-beaked yawn.

He saw no one else, not even Mrs. Norris, as he slipped silently through the castle. Harry hopped on his broom as soon as he escaped through the oak front doors, gliding casually down to the pitch. Stopping at the dressing rooms to don his practice robes, he took a handful of Snitches from the captains' locker and set out to greet the sunrise with a few rounds of none-on-one.

The practice Snitches were, by definition, in too poor condition to use in matches, having become mangled over time in various irreparable ways. One had pretty much lost all its usefulness after losing half a wing; ironically, that had happened after a practice when two Bludgers, frantic to avoid being confined in their box, suddenly smashed themselves together on the fingers of the person carrying them (everyone knew it was a mistake to handle both Bludgers at once, but people tried to save time every now and then). McClaggen had also been carrying the Snitch at the time, and the little thing was crushed in mid-flap. When he attempted to straighten the wing, it had simply snapped off along the crease, prompting Madam Hooch to lecture the entire team on the relative costs of Snitches, Bludgers, and finger splints. At any rate, the practice Snitches could still get around the field, more or less, and Harry really just wanted an excuse to fly.

The sun crept rather quickly over the horizon, turning to gold the tops of the castle towers, then slowly descending to reflect from the many windows. Owls swooped past Harry on their way to roost after a night's hunting; Harry had to chase one down after it snapped up a Snitch in its talons, undoubtedly mistaking it for a potential bedtime snack. It was not eager to part with its prize, and a number of other owls regarded Harry's rescue mission with great disapproval. Fortunately, the broken Snitch put up its own fight, scraping the owl's toes with its broken wing. The owl finally gave up, dropping the Snitch with an outraged screech. Harry reckoned he'd bring something up to the Owlery from breakfast, just for the sake of keeping the peace.

Chasing five different Snitches was a pleasant exercise in concentration and speed, and the otherwise empty airspace was an ideal environment in which to do it. Harry was thoroughly enjoying himself when the silence was shattered by an unidentifiable squawking from one of the grandstands around the pitch. At first he thought it was a great row among rival gangs of crows, but the sounds were a bit too prosaic for mere cawing. Harry swooped over the top of the bleachers to investigate the source of the sounds, with a most unexpected result.

"What the Sam Hill is this thing?" Ondossi had switched from her glottal native tongue to English as soon as she saw Harry, but she did not adjust the volume at all; her question came as a shriek. She was sprawled awkwardly on a plywood platform about a meter below a net hammock, which was swinging rather wildly over her head. With one hand gripping the edge of the platform, she was frantically swatting at the broken Snitch, which dodged in and out of her reach with obvious cheerful sportsmanship. Harry laughed so hard he was forced to land on the platform to catch his breath.

"Gee, thanks, pal," she groused at Harry, still attempting to smack the Snitch as though it were a pesky fly. "Did you sic this thing on me?"

"No, I swear, it wasn't me. Although I wish I'd arranged for you to meet it sooner, that was the funniest thing I've seen all week!"

She turned her attention from the Snitch to point an accusing finger at him. "If this develops into a regular occurrence, bucko, you are hosed. Got it?"

"Is that good or bad?" Harry asked, unable to keep a straight face. He leapt effortlessly back onto his Firebolt and captured the offending Snitch, dangling it by the unbroken wing so Tura could take a close look. She peered at it intensely.

"Is that a machine of some kind?" she finally asked.

"Let me guess. You've never heard of Quidditch," said Harry, shaking his head.

Ondossi furrowed her brow. "I have too. That's that game, isn't it?"

Harry closed his eyes and sighed. "It's a sport."

"Whatever. You're supposed to hit that thing with a bat, right? Through a hoop?" Harry winced. This was worse than a nightmare. Well, it looked like Hermione would finally have someone equally disinterested to talk to during matches.

"Not exactly," Harry muttered.

She reared backward as the Snitch attempted to flutter toward her; it had not received much attention since its injury, and it clearly considered her attempts to clobber it as a positive gesture. "I think it likes you," said Harry playfully, holding it at arms' length toward her. She glared at him suspiciously, but stopped cringing and leaned her head over the platform for a closer look. She finally reached out to pat the broken wing, leaping back with a shudder when the Snitch flapped energetically.

"Yuck," she said. "It feels like a big bug."

"I can tell we won't be debating the finer points of Quidditch any time soon," grumbled Harry. "Uh, Tura? What in the name of Merlin are you doing up in the rafters of the Quidditch bleachers? And is that a sack you're wearing?" Now that the hysteria of the Great Snitch Attack had worn off, Harry realized there was a whole new level of absurdity to explore.

"Don't be dissin' the sack," she said, again leaving Harry amazed by her ability to speak his native tongue in ways that meant absolutely nothing to him. "It happens to be very comfy. I got it from a big cargo vessel down in Anchorage. It came all the way from Colombia! Here, sniff." She crunched up some of the fabric at her shoulder and waved him over. "It used to have coffee beans in it. Go to bed and smell the coffee!" She giggled.

It definitely smelled like coffee. "Yeah, that's nice," said Harry politely. "But why are you wearing it--up here in the rafters?"

"Hey, hotshot, this happens to be my bedroom." She sat back, patting the platform and waving in invitation for him to land again. "Grawpy built it for me! It's a bit, um, high up, but Hagrid thought I shouldn't sleep too close to the ground outside."

"Right," said Harry, taking a seat on the plywood. "But why are you sleeping outside in the first place?"

"Geez Louise, Harry. I can't stay in the castle with the dream broadcasting going on. People will hate me! It wasn't so bad on the tundra, the dreams just kinda soaked into the Earth."

"My nightmares don't wake everybody else up," noted Harry.

"Well aren't you clever?" she snapped. "Maybe they will in a few years--it's fairly common among Legilimagi. I can usually keep it under control, but since I came here, they've been breaking through."

"Because of the stones?" asked Harry.

Her face wrinkled up with dismay, and she pulled her knees up inside her coffee sack. "No," she said, then looked up at him with great sorrow. "I'm just falling apart, I think." She began to hunt around on the platform, finally taking up a strip of black cloth and tying it around her eyes. "Sorry, the sun's too bright already," she said, though Harry suspected she was crying behind the blindfold.

"Tura." Harry had no idea what to say, but unless Grawp came by, he was definitely on his own under the circumstances. "Do you miss Northpole?" he finally stammered.

"No. Well, yes, I do, but that's not it. I just never imagined how hard this would be. To be around so many people all the time. To have to talk all day, answer questions. I'm so tired all the time--and it's only the first week! It's not the Occlumency," she added, as though guessing his next question. "I can do that in my sleep. Literally. But I'm not cut out to be a teacher, Harry."

Harry frowned. "You're doing quite well, Tura. Lots of people say they like your class."

She shrugged. "I just copied the style of a teacher in Northpole that everybody liked. It seems to work. But it takes a lot out of me--I'm not like that, Harry! I don't talk to people! I avoid people! I feel like I can barely drag myself up that pole for bed after classes." She paused a moment as the absurdity of that statement sank in; she and Harry both chuckled. "I haven't given you any lessons either, Harry," she continued dolefully, "and that's more important than all this DADA doo-doo."

"Yeah, well, I was beginning to wonder...but Tura, the Defense lessons are important. Look at Elias--he doesn't know the first thing about defense. People need to learn how to challenge Voldemort--"

"Challenge him?" Tura spat, cutting Harry off. "No one can challenge him but you, Harry. You know that!" Though her eyes were hidden behind the black band, she turned toward him and he could feel her angry glare. "All these people have one defense, Harry, one: YOU. All the rest is just duct tape and bailing wire. All the time I'm wasting showing them how to save themselves from dementors--that's all time I could have spent getting you ready to face the Dark Lord." She erupted once more into her native tongue, in what Harry could only guess was an angry invective. It ended with a sudden burst of tears.

Shaking his head at Ondossi's ability to switch moods faster than Vernon Dursley could change the television channels with his remote controller, Harry patted her back uncertainly until she settled down again. Two large wet crescents stained her blindfold when she turned her head toward him again.

"Harry, you have to understand, I've been waiting years for you to confront him. Everyone has--at least everyone who knew about the Prophecy, that is. Every year, every hour, every minute of delay is precious time wasted. Lives lost, pain, suffering, all that...just so I can teach Elias Ravenclaw how to stop a dementor that might never come for him at all. Or worse, for you to skate around on your broom catching mechanical bugs."

Harry's stomach lurched most uncomfortably. Ondossi abruptly stopped speaking, then lowered her head.

"I'm sorry, Harry. That was totally unfair--you're still a kid, for Pete's sake. You know, in America, wizards don't even come of age until eighteen. It's an outrage--you didn't do anything to put Lord Voldemort in power, and yet everyone's impatient for you to come along and clean up the mess. Including me. I told Dumbledore two years ago that I'd make you my apprentice, you know. During your fifth year at Hogwarts, when he began to suspect you were a Legilimagus. I told him to send you to me and let me hone you into a weapon. I even said I'd go to Hogwarts if you didn't want to leave. He said, 'No way, Jose.' I nearly had a cow. I even went over his head and talked to your guardian."

Harry sat up straight. "You met Sirius?"

"Ugh. Not really. What a fiasco. I had to find out who he was, then find him, in his Unplottable house with the Fidelius charm. It was worse than tracking a lowbush moose in a blizzard. Then I finally get the address, buy the Floo powder, borrow a fireplace since my woodstove is too small to put my head in. After all that, wouldn't you know, he'd apparently just talked to you in the Floo and was on a rampage."

Harry's stomach sank, recalling that rushed conversation with Sirius and Lupin in Dolores Umbridge's office. Harry had already known that Sirius was livid afterward--he had threatened to come up to Hogwarts right then and give Snape a piece of his mind. "I remember that day. Sirius was quite upset. But he would have wanted you to teach me--he was angry because he'd just found out that... my former Occlumency teacher had stopped the lessons."

"Yeah, he mentioned that. Loudly. He thought it was a little too coincidental that five minutes later I was there, offering to teach you. He seemed to think I was the Dark Lord's secretary or something."

Harry pictured Sirius turning back to the Floo with Lupin practically restraining him, to find an unknown witch with a strange accent asking about Occlumency. It wasn't a pretty sight. "I see what you mean. You're probably lucky he didn't try to pull you through."

"I think he would have if there hadn't been an entire planet between us," Tura agreed. "So that was it for Black, but Remus Lupin was there too, and he was a little more reasonable. He let me explain who I was and what I wanted. But I also mentioned that I wanted to get you ready to face Lord Voldemort, and that was the end of that."

"Remus turned you down?" said Harry skeptically. "Without even asking Sirius, or me?" That didn't seem like something Lupin would do.

Ondossi sighed. "That's my point. He said you had just Flooed because of some teen angst issue and before you went off to get killed, he'd like you to have a shot at growing up first."

She gave Harry a wan smile, then continued. "Well, he didn't say it quite like that. But that was what Dumbledore was trying to tell me, and I finally got it: that the world could take care of itself for a while before demanding that you step up and save it. So I crawled back under my rock and waited. As it should be."

Harry rolled that idea around in his mind for a while. "No. I think you were right in the first place, Tura. People have died because I've been out playing Quidditch and dancing at weddings--"

"NO!" she shouted, cutting him off again. "People have died because Lord Voldemort is a monster, not because you need time to grow up just like everybody else. Your real magic is just now developing, Harry. Rushing it would've been a grave mistake. Rushing it now would be a mistake! Maybe it's just as well that you had a week off; it probably gave you a chance to grow into what you've learned."

Harry pursed his lips. "I did make some progress this week." He described both readings with Ron, and how he'd read Hagrid. Ondossi's brows poked up over the blindfold at the latter.

"Wow. Hagrid's like an Occlumens with me. You didn't have any trouble?" she asked.

Harry shrugged, then remembered rather sheepishly that she couldn't see. "No, it was just like anyone else. But I found out his memory has been modified. I rather hoped you might know a way to get around that, actually."

Now her forehead wrinkled into a scowl above the blindfold. "Really? Giants tend to resist magical influences like that. It must have been somebody good. Hmph." She began tapping her fingers on the platform and chewing on the inside of her lip. Harry smiled; her concern for Hagrid was rather touching. With the two of them looking after one another, they ought to be the safest people on Earth.

"Let's go have a word with Mr. Hagrid after breakfast," she said, still drumming her fingers uneasily. She stood up and began walking toward a thick vertical beam, but as she was still blindfolded, Harry's feet and palms suddenly tingled in consternation.

"Eh, uh, Tura," he sputtered, leaping to his feet, "no offense, but you're going to break your neck going down that pole in your blindfold. Come here, we'll take the easy way." Harry steered her by the shoulders to the open side of the platform, then picked up his Firebolt. He wasn't quite sure how to put a second rider on it; this was a sports broom, designed for performance, not passengers. If he put her in front, it would be rather difficult to hold the handle, yet if she was behind him, she could conceivably fall off--with that blindfold on, she wouldn't be able to anticpate any bumps or swerves. Well, it wasn't like this was a speed trial; all he wanted to do was ferry her up to the castle. He would just have to take it slow.

"Very good, then, come up behind me," he instructed, stepping between her and the edge of the platform and carefully manuvering the broomstick between her feet. He was a bit worried about tripping her, but as always, the Firebolt wriggled efficiently into the proper position. Harry legged over the broomstick, relying on it to hover as he reached behind and put Ondossi's hands around his waist. "Hold on tight now!" He kicked off from the platform rather sluggishly, not certain how the unusual weight distribution would affect the broom's performance. Harry was marveling at the fact that the Firebolt flew almost as smoothly with two as it did with him alone, when Ondossi suddenly squeezed him so hard his vision dimmed for an instant.

"What are you doing?" she howled, which was exactly what Harry intended to ask her as soon as he could inflate his lungs again. "Are we flying? Put me down! Put me down! Down! Down!" Harry had to let go of the broomstick to pry her hands from the death-grip on his abdomen. That only made her shriek louder, and despite her insistence upon descending, she launched herself up toward his shoulders, as though putting as much cushion between herself and the ground as possible. Fortunately, his Firebolt saved him again; it glided over the grounds toward the castle at a gentle angle of its own accord, leaving him free to grapple with the squalling lunatic attempting to climb onto his head.

The broomstick alighted gracefully at the foot of the stone steps, but the same could not be said for Harry and his reluctant passenger. Once Harry's feet touched the ground, the levitation spells on the Firebolt released them, and suddenly Harry's right shoulder was bearing her full weight. Amazingly, she landed on her feet, more or less, while he was knocked flat onto the lawn. Harry opted to just lay there a moment, breathing in the moist, rich scent of grass and soil that smelled nothing like coffee. He felt as though he'd just tried to stuff a giant octopus into a tin can.

Ondossi was breathing hard, but that was a hands-down improvement from the shrieking in his ear. She stood rock still for a moment as though confirming that she was, in fact, on terra firma once more. "We made it!" she finally bubbled. "I flew!!"

Harry groaned. That must have been her first broom ride; she was still breaking in her wand, for Merlin's sake. "Yes. Aren't you clever," he mumbled, still easing his lungs back into the space from which they were so rudely evicted.

"Harry?" she said in a childlike voice of hope and wonder. "Can we do that again?"