The Park

"Snap!" shouted Ron triumphantly, slapping his hand down atop the pile of cards on the kitchen table just before Hermione's. The pot of begonias in the middle of the table rattled in its saucer.

Hermione and Harry laughed; Ron seemed to take the game very seriously, and was beating Hermione by a vast margin, just as he'd beaten Harry in the game before.

"Could you be a bit more quiet?" groaned Fred, passing by in his pajamas with a piece of toast. "It's only eleven a.m., for Merlin's sake."

"If you're going to go down to the village pub and get plastered trying to impress Muggle girls, it's your own fault," said Hermione unsympathetically. Just then, the paired cards Hermione was good-sportedly absorbing into her own stack exploded in her hand. She yelped and dropped them.

Fred groaned again, clutching his head with one hand while pouring himself a cup of tea with the other.

Hermione's enormous orange cat jumped off her lap, where it had been sitting and (Harry thought) judging their comparative skill at the game, and oozed toward the back door. "What is it, Crookshanks, hmm?" Hermione asked it in a talking-to-babies voice. "Is somebody in the garden?" She got up and opened the door.

"Oh," commented a figure of a girl bleached almost to whiteness by the midday sun outside. "Hello, Hermione. Hello, Harry. Hello, Ron." Her hand was raised as though she had been just about to knock.

She moved forward into the shadow of the house; her hair darkened to dirty blonde, and her eyes were revealed to be rather larger than usual and apparently eyebrowless. Her wand was stuck through the somewhat straggly bun into which her hair was twisted. With some amazement, Harry thought that her gaze might even be more disturbing than Dumbledore's, albeit in a different way.

"I thought your ghoul had come downstairs, but it's just your brother," she said dreamily.

Fred moaned and began to stagger back up the stairs.

"Hi, Luna," said Hermione, scooping Crookshanks up into her arms, where he purred. "Er . . . what brings you here?"

"I was out for a walk," said Luna thoughtfully.

"Ah," said Hermione. "Harry, this is Luna Lovegood. She lives nearby . . . I think. We've met a few times in the library."

"Hi," said Harry, standing up. All wizards and witches were a little eccentric, but, spotting her radish earrings, he had to admire the way Luna had really embraced oddness. "I don't know whether Ron or Ginny told you about me . . ." he began.

"No, they didn't, but Ginny's dad told my father and he told me, in case I ran into you," said Luna, tickling Crookshanks behind his ears. His purring grew even louder. "I was very sad when I heard about what happened to you, Harry."

Harry didn't quite know what to say to that. Nobody else had really mentioned it. Did she know how horrible the Dursleys were, or was she just talking about not knowing he was a wizard until he was fifteen? "It's all right, really," he mumbled. "Do you . . . do you want to play Snap with us?"

"I'm terrible at it, but I like watching," Luna said, and she sat down next to Harry, who drew another card. "Did you know that Exploding Snap can be used as a method of Divination?"

"Like real fortune-telling?" asked Harry, interested.

Across the table, Hermione shook her head, very slightly.

"Well, most Divination doesn't work," Luna went on distantly. "It all depends on the person doing it, because existence, being only perception, depends upon the perceiver. Snap," she added, just before Ron shouted the word and slammed his hand on the top of the middle pile of cards again.

"You win, Ron," acceded Hermione with a sigh.

"Oh, hi, Luna," said a slightly surprised voice from the kitchen door. Harry and Luna turned to see Ginny standing in it with her hands on her hips. "Fred's a lost cause," she announced, "but George's coming down in a minute, thanks to a bit of persuasion."

"Are you practicing spells?" asked Luna. "I know some good ones."

"We were going to show Harry a bit of wizard dueling before he goes back to--his house," said Ginny, her eyes narrowing, "but the twins decided to go out and get legless last night."

"Yes, I saw," said Luna. "Is George going to duel himself, then? That would be interesting."

"No, he's just going to demonstrate some basic dueling spells on us," Ginny said. "Wish we could duel him, but Mum'd go mad if she found out we'd been doing underage dueling."

"All right, all right, here I am," yawned a dishevelled but dressed George, appearing behind Ginny with a large cup of tea of his own.

"Good," said Ginny. "Let's go into the sitting room."

"So . . . dueling's another sport at Hogwarts, like Quidditch?" asked Harry as they all squeezed onto the sofa.

"No," said Luna distantly.

"Not really," said Hermione, fiddling with her skirt hem.

"People do it for fun, though?" said Harry, getting more confused.

"Some people do," said Luna.

"Well, yes," said Hermione, looking flustered--probably because Luna was answering all Harry's questions before her.

"All right, George," instructed Ginny, standing by her brother like a lion tamer. "Can you show us a Shield Charm?"

"Yeah, probably," said George, and, throwing out his wand, said, "Protego!"

"There's an example of a spell that's got to have force behind it," whispered Hermione to Harry.

Ginny picked up some cushions from the vacant chairs and threw them at George. Although Harry hadn't been able to see any visual result of the spell, the cushions seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier about a foot from George's head. "Shield Charm: does what it says on the tin," commented George, picking up a book called Basic Duelling from next to the wireless. He flipped through it. "What next?" he asked tiredly.

"Let's try Disarming next." Ginny picked up another pillow and drew back her arm to throw it at George again.

"Expelliarmus!" said George, twirling his wand, and the pillow flew out of Ginny's hand and into the wall.

"Usually, you use that to Disarm someone who's going to cast something on you," explained Ginny, "but since I can't do magic at the moment there's no point using a wand."

"What kind of things would the person cast on you?" asked Harry, his brow wrinkling slightly. He still didn't really understand why everyone was going out of their way to show him dueling when, as far as he was concerned, he'd never want to play the sport.

"Oh," said Ginny, "there's millions of things."

"Stunners," volunteered George.

"The full Body-Bind--paralyzes you completely for a while," contributed Ron.

"Or something more interesting, like the Jelly-Legs jinx."

"Rictusempra just tickles you," said George, looking slightly more alert. "Or the antler jinx, that's quite a good new one. Ginny's very good at the Bat-Bogey."

"The . . . antler jinx?" repeated Harry, blinking. "It gives you antlers?"

"Yeah, but it's not hard to get rid of them," said George.

"In first year, people were always casting Tarantallegra on me," said Luna helpfully. "That one makes you dance."

"Yes, but the Shield Charm can block all of those," said Hermione quickly.

"I see," said Harry. Sometimes he was a little alarmed by magical people's abandon with spells; both Sirius and the Weasleys seemed interested only in seeing what their magic could do, with the attitude that, if something got blown up or turned into a wombat accidentally, they'd just change it back. Harry didn't think he'd like having antlers, even if they could be removed quite easily.

But, then, he'd grown up in the Muggle world, where your chair or your head didn't just change with a flick of someone else's wrist. Hermione, who'd grown up with Muggles, too, seemed to feel more like he did about it all. Being around her was reassuring; you knew she wasn't going to try to slip you a potion that would give you hiccups for the next hour, for one, but it was also like stepping back from the wild dream of constant magic that was the Weasleys into the real world, where things were real and solid and certain.

And Harry knew too well that some things couldn't be fixed, even with magic . . .

"Harry?" said Ron, poking him in the ribs. "George just Stunned Ginny."

"Oh," said Harry. "Yes." Ginny was, indeed, sprawled unconscious on the floor next to a few cushions. George bent over her and said, "Renervate." She sat up again and waved to Harry.

"You see?" she said, fixing her ponytail.

Harry nodded again.

"What are you lot doing in there?" called Mrs. Weasley from the kitchen.

"Nothing, Mum," the Weasleys chorused.

"Good," said Mrs. Weasley, appearing with a wicker basket on her arm. "I've made you a picnic lunch, so you can go back down to the orchard, if you want, Oh--hello, Luna, dear!" Mrs. Weasley looked surprised to see the blonde girl sitting on her sofa.

"Hello, Mrs. Weasley," said Luna placidly.

"Thanks, Mum," said George, taking the basket from his mother at once. "Come on, children. Lunch calls."

Quickly kicking the dueling book under the sofa, Ginny followed her brother out, trailed by Ron and Hermione and, in the back, Harry and Luna.

"Your parents died," said Luna, apropos of nothing.

"Yes, I know," said Harry, caught completely off-guard.

"My mother liked to experiment with magic," Luna mentioned as they started out into the wealth of green behind the Burrow. "One day, one of her spells went wrong, and it killed her."

By now, Harry's mouth was completely dry. "I'm sorry," he managed to say.

"But, before that, she was one of the foremost research witches in Britain," Luna went on. "She helped formulate or improve hundreds of spells the Wizarding World uses today, including some of the acceleration charms on top-notch brooms like the Firebolt . . . and she convinced Honeydukes to add my gran's Cockroach Clusters to their permanent line of sweets."

"Wow," said Harry, softly.

"I'm still working on some of the things she never finished," Luna added, absently re-twisting her disarrayed hair into a new bun and sliding her wand back through it. "Nobody's ever managed to find a proper magical cure for men going bald, you know. Or hangovers. Or Wrackspurt affliction."

"Nobody's ever found a cure for those things in the Muggle world, either," said Harry, surprised.

"Yes," said Luna dreamily.

"Here we are, then," said Ron, flopping down onto a suitable patch of grass under shifting shade from a tree. He opened the picnic basket. "Urgh, leftover sandwiches."

"Will you stay and have lunch with us?" Harry asked Luna.

"No, I think I'll walk home, since people usually prefer not to share their food," answered Luna. "Bye, Harry. Bye, Ginny. Bye, Ron and George and Hermione."

She wandered off over the hill.

"Barmy," commented Ron, biting into a meatloaf sandwich. "I've run into her sometimes--she's always wandering around hunting some sort of weird animal or something--but I've never actually talked to her properly, and she's never just turned up at the house before," he told Harry.

"Oh, she's not that bad," said George. "If the worst we had at Hogwarts was people like her, we'd all have an easier life."

Harry pondered what that meant as he bit into his sandwich. It was still quite delicious, although a bit dry. "I liked her," he said, as an afterthought.

***

Then, after lunch and all too soon, it was time for Harry to go back to Grimmauld Place. The entire family gathered around the fireplace again to wave him off; even though it had only been a few days, it seemed like ages ago that they'd gathered around to greet him practically as strangers.

"Write to us whenever you want to, Harry," Hermione instructed him, handing him his bookbag.

"We'll write to you, too," said Ron.

"All right," agreed Harry. Ron's tiny owl, Pigwidgeon, fluttered down and sat on his shoulder, rather preventing him from picking up his broom. Harry tickled it under what he thought was its chin, and it squeaked and fell to the flagstoned floor in delight, then fluttered back up to the countertop. "Hey, perhaps when you go to Diagon Alley to get your school things, we can go together!"

"Yeah," said Ron.

Thank you for having me," Harry said to Mrs. Weasley, really meaning it. Harry completely understood why Hermione would have chosen to spend her summer here. "It was fantastic."

"You can stay here whenever you want, Harry," she told him, almost severely.

"Thanks for all the lessons, Hermione," Harry said, turning to the bushy-haired witch, who had become quite a friend in the last few days.

"Thanks for teaching me to fly," he said to Ron and Ginny.

"Hardly even had to," said Ron honestly.

"It was nice, Harry," said Ginny, tucking her hair behind her ear.

"I'll definitely write to you," Harry promised them all. He threw the Floo powder into the fire and took in one last glance at the Burrow's kitchen: Mrs. Weasley, looking worried; the twins, completely confident; Ron, looking surprisingly downcast; clever Hermione, who always kept her emotions mostly tucked away. His friends. "Bye!" they all said, waving.

Harry felt a twinge of sadness mix in for the first time with the happiness of his stay. Grimmauld Place would certainly seem quiet now. "Bye!" he said in reply.

As he turned back to face the fireplace, Harry thought he saw, at the farther end of the table where the twins had been sitting, the words YOU-KNOW-WHO as part of the headline on a folded newspaper. But the wizarding world didn't have a newspaper, did it?

The Floo powder was burning, though, so Harry said, "Grimmauld Place!" and stepped into the green flames.

"There you are!" said Sirius, leaping up from his chair to catch Harry as he tumbled out of this kitchen's very different fireplace.

"Sirius!" said Harry. His godfather was still wearing his dressing-gown, as usual. Harry had forgotten how Sirius always smelled slightly smoky, almost as though he'd just gotten out of a house fire, or as though he smoked, which he didn't. The way Sirius helped him up was so familiar, too, although Harry hadn't ever thought about it before. Sirius didn't squeeze Harry like Mrs. Weasley did; for all the recklessness with which Sirius did everything else, he hugged Harry gently, as though his godson was something very precious that might break.

Harry felt a tug in his chest as he remembered the first time he'd met Sirius, and how touched he'd been that Sirius, obviously ill as he was, had made such an effort to be cheerful in order to make Harry feel comfortable.

Harry hugged Sirius back as hard as he could. "What've you two been up to, then?" he asked, looking between Sirius and Lupin, who was sitting at the table, looking quite exhausted.

Sirius smiled. "Nothing very interesting," he said. "But I want to know about your time with the Weasleys. Did the twins manage to pull one over one you?"

"They tried a few things," said Harry wryly, and Sirius laughed.

"Did you have fun?"

Harry dropped his bag and broom on the floor and pulled a chair into the table. "Yeah, I did," he said, resting his chin on his palm. "We did some flying, which was brilliant, and Hermione helped me with some magic theory, and--hey, Sirius, do you know the Patronus Charm?"

Sirius lifted an eyebrow. "Moony, I think this one's yours, if you're up to it," he said to Lupin with amusement.

"Absolutely," said Lupin, sitting up straight. "Harry, how did you hear about the Patronus Charm, and why do you want to try it?"

"Hermione told me about it when she was teaching me about emotions in spellcasting," described Harry. "And I wanted to try it because--well, it sounded cool, I guess." He shrugged a little sheepishly. "I thought it would be interesting to find out what shape mine was, you know?"

Lupin and Sirius glanced at one another; again, they both seemed amused for some unknown reason.

"That seems perfectly reasonable," Lupin assented. "I presume Hermione told you about the mental necessities for casting the spell, then?"

"She told me I had to focus on a happy memory," recalled Harry. "She said it was like I was drawing on the power and strength of that memory to protect me now. Because no matter how bad you feel now, a happy memory can't be taken away from you."

"Yes, that's the . . . theory," said Lupin, adjusting his cuffs. "Well, that's Hermione for you--she learns everything, and she never forgets," he said with a smile. "I used to teach her, you know. Hermione, Ron--all of them."

Harry felt another tiny pang--not quite of regret, but not really of jealousy either--that his friends had gotten to have Lupin as their teacher. Harry felt certain Lupin must have been a perfect teacher--strict but not harsh, understanding but not a push-over.

"Well, if you've got a memory in mind, all you need is the incantation. It's Expecto Patronum."

"Expecto Patronum," Harry repeated to himself.

"Give it a try," suggested Sirius.

Harry thought about the day he'd first gotten his wand. He'd felt as though he'd been bursting with happiness, with relief that he wasn't a Squib. The experience of doing magic for the first time--it had been joy. Just joy.

But maybe that memory wasn't what he needed for this spell. Being able to do magic--it wasn't a happiness that could protect you at your darkest moment.

Then Harry thought of how Sirius had helped him up so carefully when he'd fallen out of the fire, and the time Sirius had sat with him and named every person in his photo album, and all the times Sirius had answered his questions about the Wizarding World so patiently, and he felt a different kind of happiness, a quiet kind of happiness glowing firmly in the centre of his chest, like a pilot light. Every one of those times, he'd known Sirius loved him--this reckless, quick-tempered, damaged man, trying to be the parent that Harry needed.

"Expecto Patronum!" Harry shouted, throwing out his wand.

A big, silvery animal bounded out of the end of his wand, did a lap around the room, stared up at Harry, and then seemed to evaporate.

"Cool!" said Harry. "What was it, a bear or something? Did you see, Remus?"

Lupin cleared his throat. "I think it was a dog," he said at last.

"Cool," said Harry again. He wondered what that said about him. That he was loyal, perhaps? Dutiful? It didn't seem to say anything bad. Harry was quite pleased it hadn't turned out to be something weird like, oh, a newt or a rat.

But neither Lupin nor Sirius seemed pleased. They were both sitting quite still at the table.

"That was right, wasn't it?" said Harry, now having doubts. "There wasn't anything wrong with having a dog, was there?"

"No, not at all," Lupin assured him. "You did the spell admirably, and there's nothing wrong with having a dog."

"Okay," said Harry, still not completely convinced.

"How did you find flying?" asked Lupin, changing the subject.

"Well," began Harry, not wanting to be immodest. "It was kind of easy, really. Actually, I was going to ask whether Ron and I could go to a Chudley Cannons game together sometime, because he's a big fan . . ."

"I'll talk to Mrs. Weasley about it," promised Lupin.

"Okay," said Harry again, now feeling distinctly uncomfortable. "I'll just . . . I'll just go and unpack my things upstairs." And, trying to walk at a normal pace, he went up to his room and flopped on his bed.

"What did I do?" he said to himself, looking out of the window.

The mirror snorted.

"What?" Harry asked it.

It said nothing.

"Bugger," said Harry miserably, lying back on the bed and looking up at the ceiling. He wished he knew what was going on . . . not just with this, but overall. Everything had been so perfect, he'd been ignoring the feeling at the bottom of his stomach telling him that something wasn't quite right.

What about that paper that had said You-Know-Who, anyway? Harry was more and more convinced that he had seen those words. Before, he'd thought Tonks was just being odd, referring to someone by that name, but if a newspaper was using the name in a headline, it must be a person's real name, and that person must be famous. And he'd never seen a wizarding newspaper before--unless it had been a Muggle newspaper, but that didn't seem likely, since the Burrow was about as thoroughly divorced from the Muggle world as it was possible to be.

It was just a small thing, and he probably shouldn't obsess over it, but . . .

Harry sat up. He might not be able to find out what the bigger weirdness was, but he could at least find the answer to this little mystery. He hopped off the bed and pulled the enormous encyclopedia down onto the covers again.

Would the encyclopedia really have a listing for You-Know-Who? Well, it was worth a try. Who knew? Wizards were so mad, one of them had probably changed his name to You-Know-Who for a joke.

At last, Harry actually found the entry. He hadn't really expected it to be there.

You-Know-Who: see Voldemort.