Chapter Thirty-Seven - Au Revoir

I awoke to daylight and the realization that we had not been disturbed. Harry was still sleeping and snoring softly, but Ron and Hermione were already up and dressing. I got out of the lower bunk and tickled Harry's upper lip until he awoke. "Time for breakfast," I said. "We've passed a safe night and I hear movement further along the corridor."

When we left our dorm room, we could see quite a few students. We followed half a dozen of them to a fairly large room at the end of the long first floor corridor. Madame Maxine was already present and greeted us at the door, pointing us to the farthest table. There were already half a dozen students about to settle at the table, all girls who looked to be in their sixth or seventh year. Like the group that represented Beauxbatons at the Triwizard tournament, they were all tall and quite thin, in a very athletic way. The four of us walked over, and finding that the other students already had plates of food, I pointed at their plates and made questioning motions with my hands and shoulders. The students pointed toward the wall at right angles to our table and I saw a break in the corner of the wall. We walked to the opening and found ourselves in a small room in which a small table was stacked with plates, cups stacked atop themselves, and baskets of cutlery. A longer table was laden with platters holding a large variety of fruits and breads, but also cheeses, jams, ripe olives, and coffee. I smeared cherry jam on a large piece of crusty bread, grabbed a couple oranges, a piece of soft cheese, and a mug of coffee with sugar. The girl next to me in line commented in perfect, almost non-accented English, "The school keeps staff to a minimum, so we only cook one meal a day. The rest of our meals are purchased commercially. I'm Audrey, by the way."

She led me back to the table, where I sat next to a rakishly thin girl, with light brown hair that came all the way down to the seat of her chair. She had an elongated oval face, which was emphasized by pulling her hair back in a ponytail to make a naturally high forehead look even higher. She had an almost unnaturally elongated neck and very soft looking light brown eyes, I observed, my eyes hopping all over her body as I took in her features in a manner that I would certainly have objected to, had Harry done it. I think I just found her appearance to be very unusual. She turned to me with a pleasant expression and cracked, "I really enjoyed your pantomime, but should warn you that we all speak English."

As Harry dropped himself into the seat on the other side of me and gave me a happy smile, she continued, "My name is Audrey and I'm a sixth year. Am I correct in supposing that your friend is Harry Potter?"

"Yes, he is," I replied, "and I'm Ginny Weasley, also a sixth year. It's strange that the first two students that I meet are both Audreys."

"I'm Audrey Duquette; the Audrey you walked back with is Audrey Gilon. We're the only Audreys here. It's easy to tell us apart, she's blonde, I'm not." Then, in a whisper, "unlike some, I'm happy with the way my body was made."

Okay. I decided to change the subject, before blonde Audrey realized she was being talked about. "I was shocked to see how badly your school was damaged, it's like half of it was just squashed. I was also saddened to hear that so many students were killed or injured. You were hit worse than Hogwarts."

"Yes," she replied, "we have only sixteen girls and nine boys to a class, so thirty deaths is a lot, and then there were serious mental injuries. Some of the injured may not recover - they were unable to speak when the Ministry took them from here to the hospital. The Giants were unimaginably brutal. We didn't have anything like the Voldemort wars before, so this was just totally beyond anything we thought could happen in this world."

I expressed surprise at the large discrepancy between boys and girls.

"Yes," Audrey answered, "there are more girls than boys at Beauxbatons. Many French Wizards learn to farm or enter family businesses or apprentice programs, for jobs where magic is not needed. We French don't use magic as much in our daily lives as you British do. We are more modern. The boys who want to be Wizard police, wandmakers, healers, and the like come to Beauxbatons, the others do not. Half the boys who do come, only stay five years. Girls need more magical learning, because it is their responsibility to pass on magical skills to their children. We make potions for our families, but otherwise not a lot of magic is used in the home.

"Anyway, there are fewer boys, so the east wing housed all the boys and the seventh year girls. The upper classes defended the wing and protected the younger students. Almost all the sixth and seventh year boys and most of the seventh year girls were killed or injured. We have nobody left to graduate. A lot of my closest friends…"

I sensed she was close to tears, actually I think I saw tears, but really didn't know what to say. I mumbled "I'm really sorry, that must be just awful for you," and gave her shoulder a little squeeze. I am very uncomfortable in these situations and really don't know what I should do. Harry saw me comforting Margaret and thinks I'm good at this sort of thing, but I'm just not. Mom would have known exactly what to say to Audrey. She probably would have just given her a huge hug, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that.

I realized the others had sat down, when Neville replied, "That's awful. My parents have both been in St. Mungo's and unable to talk since they were attacked and tortured by Death Eaters when I was just a year old. I'm Neville Longbottom, by the way. I just graduated, but I'm now a professor at Hogwarts,"

"You're the boy who stood up to Voldemort and killed his snake, aren't you?" asked another sixth year, who identified herself as Daphne. Daphne stood out in this group by being quite short and blonde. Although she was almost as skinny as Audrey, her face was unaccountably rounded. Her blonde hair was short and spiky."

We performed introductions all around and learned the other girls were Sophie, Camille, and Cecile. Gabriele joined us, but Mom and Bill the auror were still standing over by the self-serve food room with Madame Maxine and two of her professors. I saw that Hagrid had joined them.

"Are you lot going to be spending the summer at the school?" asked Ron. "We've got some trips we need to make, but other than that we're staying at Hogwarts this summer."

"Yes," Gabriele answered, "we had planned to do research on the Flamel collection. There were going to be more of us, but with the casualties, there will be eleven students for the summer. I guess now we'll be helping with the restoration of the school as well as our academic research."

"What can you tell us about the Flamel collection?" Hermione eagerly prompted her.

Cecile was the first to describe her work. "Camille and I have been going through the Flamel papers, and focusing on his description of the properties of the Philosopher's Stone. That may not seem particularly valuable, since the only known Philosopher's Stone has been destroyed. However, Flamel describes his searches for other Philosopher's Stones, which he believed existed, and upon his experiments and musings aimed at creating a new Philosopher's Stone. As far as I've gotten, he doesn't seem to have had much success on either of these endeavors, but there are some intriguing thoughts. Flamel believed the stone came from the lost Atlantean civilization mentioned by the Greeks and he speculates that there were many of them. There is no evidence for this in his papers. At least in the papers I've read thus far.

"The papers do dispel a lot of common myths about the Philosopher's Stone. It cannot turn one metal or element into another. It really does nothing to metals. It works more with plant and animal matter. It allows very complex and effective potions to be prepared, which are otherwise unobtainable. One of these potions promotes excellent health and greatly retards aging, but there are others. He talks about a potion which provides partial protection against many spells and another which protects against many lethal potions, with which an adversary might poison your food or drink. The Flamels needed protection against more than disease to reach the ripe old ages they achieved. That was all down to the stone and the potions the Flamels learned to make from it."

I cautiously asked her "did you read anything in the papers that related to what the Muggles call telepathy?"

"Mental communication at a distance," Hermione explained.

"No… I don't think so, but we've read not quite half the papers so far."

Blonde Audrey reported "Daphne and I have been investigating a ring from Flamel's collection, which he claimed to be the true ring of Joan d'Arc. Beauxbatons has always believed that Joan's ring was in our collection, so naturally this is a topic of great interest to us. There isn't a great deal of reliable historical documentation of the ring."

"I guess the loss of Joan's relics will end your research," I sympathized.

"Not at all," Daphne corrected me, "I was comparing the two rings the night of the attack, and had both of them on the study desk in my room…. My room's in the west wing, so I've still got both rings."

"Wow!" Harry sucked in his breath, "have you talked to Madame Maxine? She told us that Joan's ring was stolen, along with her sword and armor."

"I've been trying to find a good time to tell her," a sheepish Daphne whispered. "I should not have had either ring in my room at night. They are supposed to be locked up in the east wing."

"I wouldn't worry," interjected George. "I think Madame Maxime will agree that at times a little rule breaking can be a very good thing."

Gabrielle told us that "Sophie, Audrey Duquette, and I are working on a device that Flamel built for identifying places and objects that are magically enchanted. In his writings he says that the device can identify the areas where what he calls 'the lines of magical force' are strongest and the points where they are anchored. He describes how this knowledge can be used to make it easier to undo or circumvent the enchantment. There is a hint in what he wrote that he knew of horcruxes, and that his device could identify them. We haven't gotten that far with our research and can barely make the device work. We see a general pink glow if something is enchanted, but can't identify individual lines of magical force. The device does identify where the protective magical shield around the east wing of the chateau was destroyed, but only because that area looks dark and dead, rather than glowing pink.

"We've not been able to identify anchor points or do much to trace the magical lines. It's just early days. Audrey thinks the device is just very badly out of tune, but we haven't figured out how to fix. Actually, we've been afraid to try, until we understand it a lot better. Happily I also had the device and most of the related Flamel notes in my room on the night of the attack. Close to half of his notes were stolen, though, and I had not given those pages more than a quick scanning. Fortunately I took a few pages of notes, but they are as much questions about things I didn't understand as about definite instructions that made sense to me."

"It sounds as though your Flamel inheritance is a treasure trove," Hermione concluded. "I hope you'll show it to us before we leave this afternoon."

"Of course," most of the girls replied in unison.

"Madame Maxime mentioned that several Death Eaters were killed or captured. Do you know if any of them were identified?" asked Bill. "The Ministry will be very interested. We are trying to track the whereabouts of all the known British Death Eaters. I don't think we know the identities of most of your European Death Eater gang, but Madame Maxime said that some of your attackers spoke English."

"Then I'm afraid most of the names won't mean anything to you," answered Madame Maxime, who along with Hagrid had just joined our table. Mom and our Bill had been forced to a second table, along with the Beauxbatons staff and several students. "Two names should be very familiar to you – your fellow Englishman Dolohov was killed, and Karkaroff, whom you'll remember from the Triwizard Tournament as the former headmaster of Durmstrang, was captured. The others were descendents and diehard remnants of Grindelwald's old gang, mainly from Germany and other areas east of France. I'm not talking about rank and file soldiers in his army, but former members of his inner circle and their families. Our old gang appears to have made common cause with Voldemort's Death Eaters. We do have some French Grindelwald followers, but even they would not think of attacking children."

"We were discussing," said Harry, trying to appear very casual, "the research your students are conducting on the Flamel collection. Would it be possible for us to have a look before we leave? I was thinking, by the way, that it would be best for us to leave this afternoon and do a quick check up on Durmstrang, then we could come back here and report to you on what we've found."

"We'll be happy to show you our treasures," replied Madame Maxime, "and I'll be most interested in what you can learn at Durmstrang. We haven't heard much of their situation, and what we know was passed on to us from the Paris Ministry. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons haven't gotten along very well over the years, although I certainly know their new headmaster. We know that they were attacked at exactly the same time as Hogwarts, which leads me to believe they were considered a more important target than we were. A horde of Giants participated in the attack, but the Ministry's account, which I have great trouble believing, is that over a dozen Giants were killed. The rest of the Giants stopped fighting and left the area. This broke the attack and, although some of the attackers roamed the school grounds for a time, they apparently never succeeded in entering the castle. Dozens of attacking Wizards were killed and several more were captured. They were all members of the Grindelwald circle. I'd love to know how Durmstrang was so successful, since they didn't have the advance warning that we did."

"You know what bothers me," stated Luna as a non-question, showing she was both behind on the conversation and a little ahead of us in her thinking, "is that there were Giants involved in the attack on Beauxbatons. The Giants involved in the attacks on both Hogwarts and Durmstrang seemed to have given up the fight. We even had some of the Giants helping with the repairs at Hogwarts – we thought they had changed sides. This was at almost exactly the time that other Giants were attacking Beauxbatons. Perhaps they just regrouped and are still willing to fight for the other side."

"Or maybe the attack on Beauxbatons was just delayed for some reason, and it was an entirely different group than those who attacked the other two schools," Ron offered. "Giants can't apparate, so it probably takes a long time for one group to learn what happened to another group."

"They do send birds between groups," Hagrid offered "but since they don't have much of a written language, they couldn't send a complicated message. They may have two hundred written words in all. I've taught Grawp more than that, but over half his words are English, not Giant."

I was surprised that I hadn't thought at all about how the Giants communicated.

"Well, shall we look at the Flamel collection?" offered Madame Maxime. She led us up from the table and we carried our dirty breakfast ware to another small hole in the wall diagonal to where we were sitting. This opened up into a short corridor that led to a middling sized washing up and dishes storage area off what was left of the kitchen. The far wall of the kitchen had a gaping hole leading to what had been the Great Hall.

"The school servants will be along to wash up," Madame Maxime explained. "We have a rather small staff and we don't have kitchen Elves as Hogwarts does. In fact, there are very few house Elves in France."

"Why not?" Hermione asked, her interest clearly piqued.

"The Wizards and Elves over here did not join in the Elven Wars, so our Elves were never defeated and enslaved. Of course, we never had many Elves. Perhaps half the Elven families on the continent are refugees who fled Britain during the Elven wars. The Elves who work as house Elves are all free Elves, who are paid and can choose their own employment."

"How do they support themselves?" a surprised Hermione queried her. "The greatest fear of the British Elves whom I've talked to is that their masters will throw them out and they'd starve."

"Nonsense!" boomed Madame Maxime. "Certainly, close to half of the Elves in France work as paid domestic labor, although we don't have any at Beauxbatons, presently, but others knit, or farm, or work for the Ministry, or run a business. Elves are so hardworking and capable that the thought of them starving, if left to their own devices, is preposterous. There are one or two Wizard families who are almost fully acculturated into the French Muggle world. They use Muggle servants, but they cost more and don't produce the quantity or quality of work that Elves would, and their employers cannot perform magic in their presence. These families also have to live much like wealthy Muggles. It is not enough to just adopt electricity and Muggle communications in order to pass as Muggles. It really affects your whole life. French Wizarding families are much more modern than you are, but we are still definitely Wizards. We could not pass ourselves off as merely mildly eccentric if we had Muggle servants in our homes.

"Like here at Beauxbatons, Witches and Wizards serve as servants, but they are very expensive, compared to Elves. We hire them, as does the Ministry, so that our barely employables have work. Many are what you call Squibs, or at least the less intelligent among the Squibs. Squibs who can learn Muggle trades have no problem at all and remain attached to our community. They marry each other or the actively magical folk. We call them passive magicals, rather than Squibs. Squib sounds so insulting, don't you think."

As we returned to the first floor west wing corridor, Harry stopped and suggested to Mom, "We're not going to have sufficient time to survey the grounds and the exterior of the castle before we have to depart after lunch. Perhaps you, Hagrid, Grawp, and Bill, the auror, could get the grand tour and take notes for our report to Professor McGonagall. The rest of us can chat with the students about their summer projects and bring back notes for what students like us could do over the summer." Harry gave Mom an intense stare, but with a totally straight face, that said 'this is really important'.

"Of course, Harry," Mom replied, airily, "it does make sense to divide our efforts. There's no sense all of us traipsing through the classrooms." With that, she led the other party out toward the entry hall.

I touched Harry's neck as inconspicuously as I could

{[amusement] I just don't want Bill to learn more about the artifacts. I hope your Mom doesn't think I'm just being rude and overly bossy. Professor McGonagall did more or less leave Molly in charge of us.}

As we continued on our way and turned toward the classrooms, Daphne whispered something to Madame Maxime, who reversed course and let us back through the entry hall and up to the dorm rooms on the second floor of the west wing. "Daphne has some things to show us, in her bedroom," Madame Maxime stated matter of factly.

We all crowded into her room, as Daphne went to her desk, opened the top right-hand drawer, and pulled out a small lacquered wooden tray bearing two rings. She passed the tray around, so that we could each have a good look. "The one on the left is what our school has always called the Joan of Arc ring," Daphne explained, "While the one on the right is what Nicholas Flamel claimed to be the true Joan of Arc ring."

I stared at the rings as the tray was passed from Harry to me. Both appeared to be made of gold, and sized for a hand smaller than mine. Both were engraved "Jhesus" and "Maria", with the names separated and surrounded by crosses. The ring on the left was a little thicker and heavier, other than that, they differed primarily in the style of the lettering and the design of the crosses. The ring on the left featured double crosses, while the ring on the right had single, squared cross. There was no way I could guess which was genuine. I shook my head and passed the tray on to Ron.

{[curious] I can't tell anything about them either. I wonder if Flamel's magic detector can distinguish them. }

"By the way." I asked, "do you also have Flamel's device for detecting lines of magical force in your bedroom?"

The girl, whom I knew as 'blond Audrey', seemed to be one of the four bunking with Daphne, and she went to the other desk in the room, opened the bottom left drawer, and pulled out a very curious object. She placed the object on a small plain wooden tray that had been sitting atop the desk, and passed the tray to me.

The object was largely made of thin copper rods and wires in the shape of a triangular prism about eight inches tall and about four inches on a side on the square base. A silver wire was attached to its apex, and I lifted it by the wire to get a closer look. There was a nearly transparent stone in the center, suspended by very thin copper wires from the apex and from a point where two slightly thicker copper wires from the corners of the base crossed at a point centered on the bottom square. All of the sides of this little pyramid were made of copper rods, about an eighth of an inch in diameter. All of the faces were completely open, except for the crossed wires at the base and one of the four triangular faces, which was filled with what appeared to be thin glass or almost completely transparent quartz, which was shaped to form a raised magnifying lens in the center.

"How does it work?" I asked.

"You orient either the base or the open face opposite the glass toward the object you want to test", 'other Audrey' replied, "then look through the lens at the central stone. It lights up according to the strength of the magical force, but it must be hanging free, from the silver wire on top."

As I was already holding the detector by its wire, I carried it over to the tray with the rings, which had, by now, passed along to George. I signaled to Harry and the others to block as much light as they could with their bodies. I centered it first on the single cross ring. Staring through the lens, I could barely make out a faint glow. I moved the detector about six inches to center it over the double cross ring. Looking through the lens at the stone in the center, I saw a brighter glow and even convinced myself that I could make out two brighter lines, curving away from a bright point in the center.

"The ring with the double crosses seems to have much more magical force," I reported, passing the detector to Hermione for confirmation.

Hermione squinted at the detector twice before rendering her confirming verdict, "Yes, definitely the ring with the double crosses. The other ring might have a tiny amount of magical force."

"I knew the Beauxbatons ring was genuine," declared Madame Maxime. "That cross takes the ancient form of the Cross of Lorraine. Joan was from Lorraine. The good news is that, thanks to these bad girls, the Death Eaters don't have Joan's ring, and likely can't make her armor perform its magical protections. Actually, I'm not quite sure what powers the armor and sword have without the ring. I'm hoping that they won't work very well."

Audrey looked embarrassed. "You probably wonder why we didn't use the Flamel device to compare the rings ourselves. Certainly the Beauxbaton ring was examined. We've worked separately on most of what we received from Flamel. Several years of student projects and we each want the best grade for ourself. The Flamel ring was not shared. It is a thing of shame. We are supposed to cooperate. To cooperate, but not to cheat, it is a fine line."

She took the viewer and studied the two rings very carefully. She turned to me with a very puzzled expression "Actually, I see little difference between the two rings. I don't understand."

Hermione asked for the viewer and gave the typically intense Hermione examination to the rings. "I see the difference. This is most curious. Please, have a look... everyone should look. I don't know why the viewer should work differently for different viewers."

Harry saw the difference between the rings. Nobody else did. Madame Maxine insisted upon marching us right down to the ruins of the east wing. Based upon the way the whviewers described them, we all saw the magical force lines the same way.

"Most odd," Madame Maxime exclaimed. "It must be the Joan ring which acts differently for different viewers. You can add that mystery to your research projects, girls."

"We were told by Professor McGonagall that wandmakers usually have the skill to see magical force lines," I interrupted, "perhaps you could have whoever makes your wands look at the rings and experiment with the Flamel device."

"That's a good suggestion. Monsieur LaCroix lives in Lyon and travels to Paris for a month to sell wands. I don't want to carry our treasures to those cities - our Ministry is Monsieur LaCroix does, however, spend the first week of September term at Beauxbatons. I'll ask for his help, when next I see him," Madame Maxine favored me with a smile.

We spent the rest of the morning studying the artifacts and pouring over the Flamel papers: basically, as Ron said, "looking at the pictures", while getting a translation from Fleur or one of the Beauxbatons students. Most of our readings were from the section of the papers where Flamel discussed the Philosopher's Stone. He had tried to analyze it, both by trying to dissolve minute bits of it in water or alcohol and testing the solution in a flame, to identify metals. He had impinged a flame on the surface of the stone in an attempt to tease out its composition. He had shined a bright light through it and convinced himself it was crystalline. He had measured its density, studied it with a magnifying apparatus he had made from pieces of a Muggle microscope, and even taken it to a Muggle friend who worked in an analytical lab at a University which he declined to name. He concluded that the stone was a nearly perfect twelve-sided crystal, a little over three times the density of water, and made largely of plant proteins with some silver, gold, copper, and sugars. He hadn't worked out the exact chemical composition and was nowhere close to recreating the stone. We were musing over all of this, when Madame Maxime said it was time for lunch.

We retraced our steps to the same room in which we had picked up our food and cutlery for breakfast. Along the way, I heard Harry mention to Madame Maxine in a loud whisper, "Your attackers will likely come back for the ring. Make sure your defenses are strong, especially any weak point that the other group identified during the tour you just gave for the other half of our group."

As we entered the serving room to collect our lunch, we found that the other group had arrived just ahead of us. Seeing them, Madame Maxime did not say a word, but shot Harry a very conspiratorial glance. I'm sure she wondered about the divisions within our delegation.

For lunch, there was a warming tray of thin crepes, and other trays with thin asparagus, and with crab meat in a rich-looking white sauce. There were also carafes of white wine. Madame Maxime demonstrated the proper way to fill and roll the crepes and we all filled our glasses, made our crepes, grabbed our cutlery, and followed her to the two far tables.

At lunch, Mom and Madame Maxime sat with us, while both Bills, Hagrid, and George were at the second table with the rest of the Beauxbatons staff. Lunch was excellent, if very different from the Hogwarts' fare. My large glass of wine left me feeling slightly tipsy. Most of the lunch conversation was between Harry and Mom or Madame Maxime.

"We'll be back here as soon as we can. Perhaps we can learn something at Durmstrang that can help in your defense of Beauxbaton's," Harry promised. "I really want to know how they were so successful in thwarting the attack and keeping the Giants from breaching their castle. I sent an owl to Professor McGonagall last night and asked her to send any return message here, by the same owl. It's a large bird, all snowy white."

"That will be fine," replied Madame Maxime.

Turning to Mom, Harry continued, "Thank you for babysitting Bill, Molly. I'm not sure that I trust him and I didn't want him to know about the artifacts we were examining. We're going to need him to apparate us to Durmstrang, since none of the rest of us have been there, but then I'd appreciate it if you could send him home to report to Professor McGonagall and the Ministry. Whatever the secret to Durmstrang's successful defense, I'd prefer we learn it after Bill is safely gone. I also don't want him to know about Hermione's parents in Australia."

"I'll do that," replied Mom, "even though I know the Minister trusts Bill with his life. The Minister, and Arthur, and Professor McGonagall agreed that we wouldn't saddle your group with someone that you don't personally trust. That's why Professor Slughorn isn't on this trip. Personally, I'd say you were being silly, if it weren't for the bombs in Arthur's office. Still, I hope we won't find ourselves short of experienced fighters, if we encounter problems. I understand you're not back to tip top shape as a fighter."

This was starting to get awkward and Harry was starting to flush. I didn't need to be within a few inches to sense his mood. "Really, Mom, I've been dueling with Harry and he is doing so much better. I think he was just mentally tired after the Battle of Hogwarts. Besides, you and I are very good fighters and so are Neville and George."

Mom just replied, "alright, dear," but looked both skeptical and a little embarrassed that she had raised this particular topic in the presence of our hosts. This gave Harry time to recover and act as if nothing untoward had happened.

"Thank you," Harry replied. "I know it seems like a silly request, and we really do appreciate all of you humoring us. Truth is, we're used to working alone, but I also can't help wonder if Bill was associated with Lucius Malfoy's attack. Anyway, the Minister and Professor McGonagall will still have you and Hagrid to watch over us at Durmstrang."

"Yes, dear," Mom repeated herself, with just a hint of doubt. "We have just about enough time to write up our reports for Professor McGonagall. Bill can carry them back for us. After you write yours, I'll encrypt it using a spell that Professor McGonagall gave me for this very purpose."

Harry went to an empty classroom with Mom to write their reports, while the rest of us continued to chat with Gabrielle and the other Beauxbatons students. I tried to determine if any of them had seen anything in the FlameI papers, which seemed to pertain to experiments on the mental transmission of thoughts. None of the girls remembered reading of this, although they admitted that they had not done more than the briefest cataloging of half the stolen pages and couldn't begin to say what was in them.

"You know something strange," Gabrielle began, "there were large gaps in the chronology of the papers which Flamel sent to us. I'm sure we never had his full collection."

I thanked the girls for all of their help and promised Gabrielle that we would visit her parents' home with Bill and Fleur after we returned from the next leg of our trip. An hour later, Harry and Mom joined us and it was time to depart.

We collected our things from the dorm and walked down to the paddock to pick up Grawp. Avoiding the horse droppings, we formed a circle at the edge of the paddock and linked arms. Two twisting and turning minutes later, with only slight head and stomach unpleasantness, we apparated beside a giant wrought iron gate, at least fifteen feet tall. The air was cooler and seemed a bit thinner than it had at Beauxbatons and between gaps in the hedge and trees in back of us, I could tell that we were surrounded by mountains. At that moment, a half dozen staff appeared at the gates with wands drawn.