Chapter 28
Chapter 28
“Thank you. If it weren’t for you…”
Suer left the headmaster’s office laden with knowledge. He also carried a book and a roll of parchment.
He had asked Dumbledore for the parchment during the second half of their private lesson, and it was now covered with hastily scribbled notes.
Dumbledore had pulled the book from behind his shelves and lent it to Suer.
“Return it when you have finished reading. Its author went to meet Mr. Merlin a very long time ago, and this is the only surviving copy.”
“Yes, Headmaster.”
Suer cradled the book, which looked ready to fall apart, with the greatest care.
Back in the headmaster’s office, Dumbledore watched Suer’s cheerful figure disappear and sighed softly.
“His talent is greater even than his parents’. What do you think, Fawkes?”
Fawkes raised his head and gave a quiet cry, as though agreeing.
“But his talent is not what I admire most.” Dumbledore laid his large hand over the phoenix’s warm feathers. “It is the warmth in his heart.”
“Family…”
“Ariana…”
Dumbledore raised a hand to wipe at the corner of one eye. His sigh sank lower until it faded entirely.
Several former headmasters in the portraits, who knew the story, looked at him with sympathy.
…
On the fourth floor of the castle, inside the library–
“What? What did you say?”
Hermione shot to her feet beside the table, her round eyes becoming even rounder.
“Ahem.”
Madam Pince sent a cold, sinister look in their direction and coughed a warning.
“You mean Professor Dumbledore just…” Hermione wilted immediately and lowered her voice. “He gave you a private Transfiguration lesson?”
Her eyes were shining with excitement. Suer carefully laid the book and parchment on the table before her, then raised his brows.
“That’s not all. He said I could go to him with any questions I had about Transfiguration.”
“That’s wonderful! Why didn’t you call me?” Hermione opened the book with exquisite care, unable to stop herself from complaining. “Hogwarts: A History says that Headmaster Dumbledore taught Transfiguration before he became headmaster.”
“I was only taking a walk on the eighth floor. I didn’t know the headmaster’s office was up there.” Suer shrugged. “But I have a new idea about layered transformations now.”
“Professor Dumbledore told me about a useful little technique. Remember the red-haired Auror? This is how she did it. When we have enough time, we don’t need to complete the entire transformation in a single step…”
Hermione listened for a while, then nodded in understanding and tilted her chin toward Suer.
“Shall we try it?”
“Of course.” Suer had no objection. “After dinner, though. I need to put this book in the dormitory first. Professor Dumbledore said it was unique and ordered me to be extremely careful with it.”
They ate dinner at the Hufflepuff table, Hermione seated beside Suer. Even as she stuffed food into her mouth, she kept proposing one idea after another.
Her face flushed with the force of the brainstorming. She finished everything on her plate as fast as possible, gulped down some pumpkin juice, then began urging Suer to hurry.
“Faster! Even a donkey wouldn’t dare take a break this long.”
“We have no time and far too much to do. Come on, come on!”
Suer ignored the strange or knowing looks from the Hufflepuffs around him. He treated Hermione’s voice like a passing breeze, finished dinner at his own unhurried pace, and only then followed the impatient girl out of the Great Hall.
Bang!
An enormous crash shook an empty classroom on the second floor. Suer reacted instantly and pulled Hermione aside before the flying splinters could injure her.
“Why did it fail?” Hermione stared blankly at the vanished horse and the chair reduced to a heap of broken wood. “It should have worked.”
“Let’s try again. There is no hurry,” Suer reassured her. “Dumbledore said my idea was correct. We only need patience.”
More piles of shattered wood lay nearby. Suer had clearly failed many times already.
Both Suer and Hermione could now transform a chair into a horse. Adding a horn to the horse’s head was several orders of difficulty harder. The result spoke for itself: not one attempt had succeeded.
“You two again!”
Filch stood in the doorway, his face dark, interrupting their discussion.
He surveyed the chaos throughout the classroom and suppressed the urge to lock both young wizards in the castle dungeon. Instead, he was forced to accept Suer’s and Hermione’s apologies.
There was nothing else he could do. They had Professor McGonagall’s special written permission and had broken no school rules.
“Clean this room! Otherwise, I will be delighted to have Professor McGonagall take that note away from you.”
Filch finally stormed out with his cat.
Sighing, Suer gathered the shattered wood into a pile. He resolved to try opening the Room of Requirement again in the next few days. Now he could appear on the eighth floor openly.
Headmaster Dumbledore made an excellent shield.
Several more days passed. Hermione and Suer appeared to reach a bottleneck in their practice. They managed to produce a horn on the horse’s head, but it lasted only a short while before disintegrating. Then the wooden chair exploded.
They left one empty classroom after another in a terrible state. Filch’s patience was plainly approaching its limit.
In the end, he succeeded. Professor McGonagall came to speak with Suer after a Transfiguration lesson, though she did not withdraw their permission.
She merely suggested, with great tact, that they might reduce the frequency of their practice and at least give Mr. Filch enough time to clean one classroom before they destroyed the next.
Then came another flying lesson.
“Remember: both hands on the front of the broom, and push away from the ground evenly with both feet!”
Madam Hooch’s sharp voice rang across the lawn.
A crowd of young witches and wizards sat crookedly on their brooms, struggling to hover without falling off.
Flying was a technical skill. Suer had no choice but to put the ideas whirling in his head aside for the moment.
“That’s it. Now lower your bodies and instruct your brooms to fly forward.” Madam Hooch paced back and forth.
“Do you see the tree ahead with the sign hanging from it? Today, you will fly there and back. If you do not fall from your broom in between, you will have succeeded.”
“Remember Mr. Longbottom’s lesson. Do not push too hard when you take off.”
Her words provoked scattered chuckles, which she promptly silenced with a reprimand.
The students began fumbling with their brooms. They moved forward and backward in twos and threes, punctuated by cries whenever someone accidentally tumbled off.
“Balance! I have told you countless times. Your body, your broom, and your arms must form a stable triangle!”
Madam Hooch’s sharp voice rang out again.
It made Suer’s head hum–but it also flashed through his thoughts like lightning.
“That’s it!”
“Balance!”
Thump.
Distracted, Suer established intimate contact with the lawn.
His robes were smeared with mud and grass, leaving him in a sorry state, but his face was radiant with delight.