Rowena's Quill

Dumbledore pulled himself out of the Pensieve. The quill - its song, that cackling laugh - all of it seemed to indicate that it had been a horcrux. And that magnetic pull that carried Rowena into the flame - he saw it very differently now. He might have been correct that the quill was an extension of Rowena, but that couldn't have been all there was to it. The probability that some foreign soul had inhabited the quill also was seeming more and more likely. And when Rowena sought to destroy it, it pulled her right along with it.

If all his conjectures were correct, then Tom was one step closer to defeat. But it was only conjecture. Until he had facts, he could not rule out the possibility that a Ravenclaw Horcrux was still hidden in the world, preserving the life of a genocidal murderer.

It was imperative that he speak to Luna and try to trigger her memory. She was nearly sixteen now, and no longer a child, but it was still a delicate matter. He conceived of two possible approaches, and then went out to find her.

Being rather less adventurous than Harry, it was easy to guess where she might be. Turning invisible, he moved a staircase over and took it to the Room of Requirement. Draco would be inside, of course, but Luna was outside, sitting on the floor with a book. Two first year girls were there, too, but as soon as he made himself visible, they scampered away.

"Pity," thought Dumbledore. "They have no reason to fear me."

Luna scrambled to her feet when she saw him. "Good morning, Professor Dumbledore."

"Good morning, Miss Lovegood. Were you waiting for a friend?"

"Yes, sir," she said, flushing a charming pink. Dumbledore was rather sorry to take her away from Neville, but there would be plenty of time for that later.

"I hope you will not mind if I ask you to put off whatever plans you had for a little while and come speak to me in my office."

Many a student would be nervous at being called for a private conference with him. Harry was, his first time. But Luna simply said, "Of course, sir," and followed him up the same staircase he'd just descended.

Luna's already protuberant eyes seemed to pop out as she surveyed his office. His aurameters, phantasmographs, spelloscillators, and ethereoscopes were all whirring away. Fawkes, at the peak of his life cycle, was preening his glorious crimson feathers on his perch. The portraits, with the exception of Armando Dippet's, were all asleep in their frames. He was eyeing Luna, though she scarcely took notice of him. Her gaze traveled all around the room, and just as Dumbledore had hoped, she settled on the Pensieve. He sat down at his desk and motioned that she should sit opposite him.

"I trust you understand the Rune engravings?"

"Recollections of the past light the path to the future," she translated.

"Correct," he said smiling. "It is called a Pensieve. You see, at the end of each day, I reflect on everything I experienced, and then preserve my memory in here. That way, I can revisit it whenever I need to."

"Like keeping a diary."

"Very much like it, but I do not write my memories into the Pensieve. I capture them this way." He held his wand to his temple, allowed it to extract his thought, and then deposited the silvery substance into the Pensieve.

"You did that to me when Mummy died," she whispered.

"And I preserved your memory in here, too, so that someday, seen alongside my experiences, the cause of her death might become clearer to me."

Luna's own nine-year-old face rose to the surface. The present-day Luna turned away. It was not the time for the direct approach. He banished the Pensieve back to the cabinet.

"Professor, I'm sorry. I am grateful that you think of her and keep trying."

"I know you are, Luna. No need to apologize." He twinkled a cheering charm over her, and tried his alternate plan. "Professor Firenze tells me that you gave an excellent accounting of the cloud formations at the Quidditch match."

The effect was immediate.

"Professor Firenze heard me commentate?"

"Oh, yes. I daresay he is as fascinated by human life as you are by centaurs."

"And he said I was good?"

"Excellent, Miss Lovegood. To be perfectly precise, the word he used was 'Excellent.' He said he never understood Quidditch at all until your commentary."

Luna sat back in her chair, her face glowing. Firenze's praise more than made up for the other students' jeers. Then a sudden worry seized her.

"Professor! What if the other centaurs heard me from the forest? Won't that make them angrier - to actually hear a human using their arts?"

"Our voice enhancing enchantments cannot carry that far, Luna. But I am glad to know that you appreciate the seriousness of the rift between Professor Firenze and his herd. He made a great sacrifice to come and teach here, and that is why I want to speak to you."

Puzzled by what this possibly had to do with her, Luna sat up attentively.

"As I am sure you realize, Professor Firenze's Divination classes are an anomaly in centaurian and wizarding history. Professor Firenze informs me it was all foretold, which places a check on any pride I might have taken for my role in it, but I am gratified to know that at least one student is reaping the benefit."

Yawning, Phineas' portrait interrupted, "So why then do you persist in keeping that drunken fraud on your staff, Albus?"

"Professor Trelawney is not a fraud!" cried Luna.

"You've spoken disrespectfully to an elder, young lady," said Armando. "And you're out of turn, too. What would your grandmother say?"

"If you'll excuse us, gentlemen, one headmaster is quite enough for one student to face at a time." With one long vertical swipe of his wand, Dumbledore drew a dark curtain over the portraits.

"Sound proof," he explained. "They can no longer hear us, and they will not disturb us again."

Luna glared at the curtain. "It isn't fair to call Professor Trelawney a fraud even if she has let herself be influenced by the Helium Huckster."

Dumbledore could not help but smile at this delightful lapse into code, but as he combined the letters into different patterns in his mind, he was struck by its brilliance. In Teutonic, the word "huckster" worked out to "ego," and "helium" must therefore mean "inflated." But in Gaelic the entire phrase together had a different, though related meaning: "envy."

"Now that," he said, "is truly a masterpiece. Your parents' household codes always were my favorites. I imagine you were hearing stories about avoiding the Helium Huckster even when you were very little."

"Yes, sir."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Very well then, Luna. You continue avoiding that Helium Huckster. I need a student's point of view, and yours will help better than anybody's. Professor Trelawney has made it no secret that she considers Professor Firenze a rival, but the defense you just gave her indicates you've learned from both teachers. Could you describe for me the differences between studying under a human Seer and studying under a centaur?"

Luna cocked her head as she considered the question. "I love Professor Firenze's classes, but he can be very difficult to understand. I have to work hard at it. I go to the Astronomy Tower at night and I walk around the grounds in the daytime, looking for the patterns he showed us in class. It takes a very long time. But I was almost always alone last term, so I had the time."

Dumbledore swiftly rose from his desk and walked away from her. How she could pierce his heart at times! Stopping at Fawkes' perch, his back still toward her, he asked, "But that is changing for you now, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. Professor Firenze said it would, and I'm very glad. As much as I love his classes, I love having friends more."

Dumbledore gave Fawkes a treat and turned back toward her.

"But Professor Trelawney taught me so much," she continued, eager to give her other teacher equal representation. "Especially in third year. But of course, you were the first one to teach me about premonitions."

If Dumbledore had not just seen it in his Pensieve, he might have forgotten that little detail. "All I taught you was a word for an experience you were already having."

"But that was very important for me," she said, her eyes widening in her earnestness. "Until then, I didn't understand they were a special kind of wrackspurts. And then with Professor Trelawney, I learned to control them a little and make them work when I wanted them to."

"So for you, learning Divination is very much like spell-casting. It's just a matter of harnessing the power that is already there."

"Yes, sir. And that's why I'm glad I had Professor Trelawney first. I don't see how I could have learned that from anyone except another human."

He had been right. Nobody's viewpoint could have helped him more.

"You say you have achieved some control. I assume you mean you can control when you see but not necessarily what you see?"

"Yes, sir."

"And past, present, and future being part of one continuum, am I correct that you've had visions of all three?"

Luna thought about that for a moment. "I don't think I see the present very well, sir."

Once again, he could not suppress a smile. "Luna, will you favor me with a reading?"

"Oh!"

"Ah, the delectable irony," thought Dumbledore. She had not foreseen that he would ask her.

"Still avoiding the Helium Huckster?" he teased.

The joke was lost on her. She began twisting her fingers in her lap.

"Come now, dear girl, why be so nervous? I have faith in you. Choose a tool for yourself. What will it be? Runes stones? Tarot cards? Crystal ball? I own them all, though I do not use them myself."

He sighed. It was because he owned more than he needed that he had invented the Tillhiasit charm in the first place.

"Crystal ball, please. But, sir, I don't always get results, and even when I do, I don't always understand them."

"This is not your O.W.L. exam. No pressure at all."

The pressure should all be on him.

He summoned the crystal ball for her. She looked up at him, studied his face a moment, and then gazed into the crystal ball. After many minutes, she began to speak.

"I see a lady sleeping. She looks like . . . She is! It's my Granny, only she's young! I never knew how much Mummy looked like her! I don't think I have ever seen this far back in the past before - to a time before I was born."

Dumbledore could not have dreamed of better results. "I think that because you are doing the reading for me, you can see within my lifetime."

Excited at the novelty of seeing her very own grandmother in her youth, Luna began to describe the room. "There's a huge stack of books and papers - those must be her translations, and a robe hung over the door. And now there's a man in her room, tiptoeing around so she will not wake up. It must be my grandfather!"

"What does he look like?"

"Dark . . . and handsome."

"And bearded?"

"No, no beard. He's searching for something."

Dumbledore was on the edge of his seat. "Luna, look away from the crystal ball and into my eyes, but all the while, keep that man's image in your mind."

Luna obeyed, and when Dumbledore saw what she saw, his insides ran cold. It was Tom Riddle.

"That was not your grandfather," he said grimly. "I am afraid it may have been a burglar."

"But Professor, didn't you fix it that nobody could ever steal from Granny? Whatever that man took - wouldn't it have gone back to her eventually?"

That cut him to the quick. It was one thing to suspect his miscalculation, but quite another to hear it from her own mouth.

"Yes, Luna," he said somberly. "Whatever he took would have returned itself to her. Look back into the orb now. Perhaps you will catch the end of the vision."

Luna lowered her eyes, waited a few moments, and shook her head. "The vision is gone, sir."

"My accursed impatience," Dumbledore chastised himself. "If I had waited, she might have seen more."

"I'll keep looking, sir," said Luna. She did not understand his frustration, but she was anxious to relieve it. "Something will come."

And indeed something did. Her face froze up in horror. Quickly, he summoned a few gurdyroots from his shelves and thrust them into her hands. Surprised, she looked up.

"Your mother?" he asked gently.

She nodded.

"I am very, very sorry. The last thing I wanted was for you to have a vision that would distress you."

What he had hoped for was a vision a few minutes earlier, before the death.

"It happens to me sometimes," she murmured.

"I should have realized. But please understand, I have a good reason for putting you through all this. I would not do it if it were not of the utmost importance."

Luna nodded. The pain and fear were subsiding from her eyes. The gurdyroots were working their magic.

"If I told you that as long as you held those roots in your hands, you would have a happy vision, would you believe me?"

"I believe everything you say, sir."

Oh, such pure confidence and trust! Did he deserve it after what he might have cost her, albeit inadvertently? All he could do for her now was to make her world a little sunnier.

"You will have a happy vision," he told her. "Now, will you try again for me?"

She looked back down at the crystal ball. This time, the vision came to her instantly.

"I see an old lady. I've seen her before, but I can't place where. She's very happy. She's smiling and she's even got happy tears in her eyes."

"Lift your eyes to mine as you did before. Keep the vision in mind. There we are."

What he saw nearly brought happy tears to his eyes, too. It was Augusta Longbottom.

"I think I know what that means. I am not a Seer, but I would venture to guess that the lady is smiling because she loves you."

Luna cocked her head thoughtfully again. Dumbledore assumed she was trying to remember where she might have seen Augusta - King's Cross station, surely, only with her hat on. But Luna was still thinking about Divination classes. "Professor, who will I have next year at N.E.W.T. level?"

"Whom would you prefer to have?"

He was glad the portraits were still behind the curtain. Otherwise, he would have been treated to a litany of advice about the foolhardiness of giving students too much power of choice.

Luna shook her head. "I can't decide. I like both."

"I think we will come to some sort of acceptable arrangement, then. Thank you very much, Luna. You've been of great help."

She was glowing again, pleased to have helped the headmaster, though she had no idea how valuable she actually had been. He would have to interview her again, of course, but he would give it some time. He needed Horace's memory first and foremost in any case.

"And now I must ask you for two more things. First, please do not share with anyone at Hogwarts what we discussed here today. If you feel the need to talk about it, you may write to your father, but that is all. As you can well imagine, I do not want any of this getting back to the wrong parties."

"Yes, sir."

"And second," he said, taking Harry's note out of his desk and folding it, "would you please bring this to Harry Potter?"

Luna put down the gurdyroots to take the note from him.

"You may keep those," he told her, summoning some crantiary gravel to his desk. "Store them with the gravel for freshness."

Luna put the note, the gravel, and the gurdyroots into her bag. "Professor, what are these please?"

"Gurdyroots," he said, twinkling at her. "Excellent for warding off Gulping Plimpies."

He walked her to the door, watching her wheels turn as she tried to work out the code. She'd need quill and parchment for a code that intricate, but for her sake he hoped she'd learn about the gurdyroots by a simpler and more enjoyable method - by running across Neville and asking him.