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She gestured towards the noticeboard, upon which, sure enough, she had pinned a list of all her missing books and clothes, with a plea for their return.

An odd feeling rose in Harry; an emotion quite different from the anger and grief that had filled him since Sirius’s death. It was a few moments before he realised that he was feeling sorry for Luna.

“How come people hide your stuff?” he asked her, frowning.

“Oh… well…” she shrugged. “I think they think I’m a bit odd, you know. Some people call me ‘Loony’ Lovegood, actually.”

Harry looked at her and the new feeling of pity intensified rather painfully.

“That’s no reason for them to take your things,” he said flatly. “D’you want help finding them?”

“Oh, no,” she said, smiling at him. “They’ll come back, they always do in the end. It was just that I wanted to pack tonight. Anyway… why aren’t you at the feast?”

Harry shrugged. “Just didn’t feel like it.”

“No,” said Luna, observing him with those oddly misty, protuberant eyes. “I don’t suppose you do. That man the Death Eaters killed was your godfather, wasn’t he? Ginny told me.”

Harry nodded curtly, but found that for some reason he did not mind Luna talking about Sirius. He had just remembered that she, too, could see Thestrals.

“Have you…” he began. “I mean, who… has anyone you known ever died?”

“Yes,” said Luna simply, “my mother. She was a quite extraordinary witch, you know, but she did like to experiment and one of her spells went rather badly wrong one day. I was nine.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry mumbled.

“Yes, it was rather horrible,” said Luna conversationally. “I still feel very sad about it sometimes. But I’ve still got Dad. And anyway, it’s not as though I’ll never see Mum again, is it?”

“Er—isn’t it?” said Harry uncertainly.

She shook her head in disbelief.

“Oh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil, didn’t you?”

“You mean…”

“In that room with the archway. They were just lurking out of sight, that’s all. You heard them.”

They looked at each other. Luna was smiling slightly. Harry did not know what to say, or to think; Luna believed so many extraordinary things… yet he had been sure he had heard voices behind the veil, too.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help you look for your stuff?” he said.

“Oh, no,” said Luna. “No, I think I’ll just go down and have some pudding and wait for it all to turn up… it always does in the end… well, have a nice holiday, Harry.”

“Yeah… yeah, you too.”

She walked away from him and, as he watched her go, he found that the terrible weight in his stomach—seemed to have lessened slightly.

* * *

The journey home on the Hogwarts Express next day was eventful in several ways. Firstly Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle, who had clearly been waiting all week for the opportunity to strike without teacher witnesses, attempted to ambush Harry halfway down the train as he made his way back from the toilet. The attack might have succeeded had it not been for the fact that they unwittingly chose to stage the attack right outside a compartment full of D.A. members, who saw what was happening through the glass and rose as one to rush to Harry’s aid. By the time Ernie Macmillan, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Anthony Goldstein and Terry Boot had finished using a wide variety of the hexes and jinxes Harry had taught them, Malfoy Crabbe and Goyle resembled nothing so much as three gigantic slugs squeezed into Hogwarts uniform as Harry, Ernie and Justin hoisted them into the luggage rack and left them there to ooze.

“I must say, I’m looking forward to seeing Malfoy’s mother’s face when he gets off the train,” said Ernie, with some satisfaction, as he watched Malloy squirm above him. Ernie had never quite got over the indignity of Malloy docking points from Hufflepuff during his brief spell as a member of the Inquisitorial Squad.

“Goyle’s mum’ll be really pleased, though,” said Ron, who had come to investigate the source of the commotion. “He’s loads betterlooking now… anyway, Harry, the food trolley’s just stopped if you want anything…”

Harry thanked the others and accompanied Ron back to their compartment, where he bought a large pile of cauldron cakes and pumpkin pasties. Hermione was reading the Daily Prophet again, Ginny was doing a quiz in The Quibbler and Neville was stroking his Mimbulus mimbletonia, which had grown a great deal over the year and now made odd crooning noises when touched.

Harry and Ron whiled away most of the journey playing wizard chess while Hermione read out snippets from the Prophet. It was now full of articles about how to repel Dementors, attempts by the Ministry to track down Death Eaters and hysterical letters claiming that the writer had seen Lord Voldemort walking past their house that very morning…

“It hasn’t really started yet,” sighed Hermione gloomily, folding up the newspaper again. “But it won’t be long now…”

“Hey, Harry,” said Ron softly, nodding towards the glass window on to the corridor.

Harry looked around. Cho was passing, accompanied by Marietta Edgecombe, who was wearing a balaclava. His and Cho’s eyes met for a moment. Cho blushed and kept walking. Harry looked back down at the chessboard just in time to see one of his pawns chased off its square by Ron’s knight.

“What’s—er—going on with you and her, anyway?” Ron asked quietly.

“Nothing,” said Harry truthfully.

“I—er—heard she’s going out with someone else now,” said Hermione tentatively.

Harry was surprised to find that this information did not hurt at all. Wanting to impress Cho seemed to belong to a past that was no longer quite connected with him; so much of what he had wanted before Sirius’s death felt that way these days… the week that had elapsed since he had last seen Sirius seemed to have lasted much, much longer; it stretched across two universes, the one with Sirius in it, and the one without.

“You’re well out of it, mate,” said Ron forcefully. “I mean, she’s quite good-looking and all that, but you want someone a bit more cheerful.”

“She’s probably cheerful enough with someone else,” said Harry, shrugging.

“Who’s she with now, anyway?” Ron asked Hermione, but it was Ginny who answered.

“Michael Corner,” she said.

“Michael—but—” maid Ron, craning around in his seat to stare at her. “But you were going out with him!”

“Not any more,” said Ginny resolutely. “He didn’t like Gryffindor beating Ravenclaw at Quidditch, and got really sulky, so I ditched him and he ran off to comfort Cho instead.” She scratched her nose absently with the end of her quill, turned The Quibbler upsidedown and began marking her answers. Ron looked highly delighted.

“Well, I always thought he was a bit of an idiot,” he said, prodding his queen forwards towards Harry’s quivering castle. “Good for you. Just choose someone—better—next time.”

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