------------------------------------------------------------
HARRY POTTER AND THE JADE DRAGON
------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter XXX
Last
Our lives are
sun-sparkles,
Brief flashes on the Ocean of Time;
But Love is eternal.
So wait for me -
I believe,
We shall one day walk again
in the Timeless Land
Where the voices sing their songs of forever,
and the shadow of sorrow can never come.
Several
hours had passed. Harry and the others had gathered up the fallen
wands
and returned each to its owner, but they had left the jade cups
where they were, for
the time being. They had built a small fire at the edge of the
ruins of the fortress, and
were now sitting around it, feeling sober. In a small cabin nearby,
they had found a
large store of Liu Pei's potion, the one which could make a person
immune to the
Devil's Curse. Deorg must have smuggled it out of Tian-Long, and
been consuming
a bit of it, every day.
Lupin had Disapparated to Singapore to break the news to Robert's
parents. Jeanne
and Shan were visible in the distance, sitting quietly together
around a fire in the clearing,
with Robert's body next to them. Shan had laid Robert's head in
her lap.
Harry was staring numbly at the ruins in front of him. The
cave where Jeanne had been
imprisoned must have been buried underneath the rubble, and the
mirror probably lay
there as well, destroyed. There was no more Stardust to bring
Robert back.
Why didn't I guess? He kept asking himself. I had the jade
dragon with me all the time,
and I didn't know. No wonder Robert had taken such a long time
to examine the
Translator. He must have realised what it was, right away.
"Harry, don't blame yourself," said Ron, sounding
subdued, "There's nothing you could
have done, anyway. If Robert hadn't taken the Translator, Deorg
would have killed Shan."
Harry didn't feel any better.
"I should have known," he said, staring at the fire
in front of him. "Listened to Yang-Kang more
in class how to identify a Devil's Curse tried to
learn how to work one, or something "
Hermione was sitting next to him, her face rather pale, but
she looked more composed than
Harry would have thought, considering her friendship with Robert.
"Harry," she said softly, "don't feel bad. I
think Robert wanted it to happen this way. There's
something else Sang Nila told Jeanne, which I didn't tell you
"
They turned to look at her.
Hermione glanced at Shan and Jeanne in the distance, then turned back to Harry.
"Robert had a genetic defect which magic couldn't cure,
Harry," she said. "He knew it all
along, and Shan knew it too. He wouldn't have lived beyond the
age of twenty-five."
They were looking at her in surprise.
"That's why Shan didn't want him to go to Shao-Lin,"
said Hermione, staring down at her
hands in her lap. "She felt they already had so little time
to be together, as it was."
"But thenwhy did he decide to go?" said Ron, looking bewildered.
Hermione took a book out from inside her robes, and placed it in her lap.
"I think he suspected something like this was going to
happen," she said, staring at the
book. "He wanted to get Shan used to the idea that she would
have to get along without
him sooner, so that it wouldn't be too much of a shock to her
when it happened."
Harry looked at the book. It was The Snow Goose.
"Is that the book you've been reading all evening?" he asked.
Hermione nodded.
Harry picked the book up. It looked dog-eared and battered,
as if it had been read so
many times that its owner knew it by heart, and had kept it away
in its transparent
wrapping, for safekeeping.
Harry opened the book; Chinese characters had been scribbled
on the inside of the
front cover. Robert had written a classical poem in Chinese there,
together with an
English translation below. It was by Su Tung-Po, one of the Tang
Dynasty poets :
To what can our life
on earth be likened?
To a flock of geese,
Alighting on the snow
Sometimes leaving a trace of their passage.
Harry looked at it, then passed the book to Ron, who turned it
around in his hands,
a thoughtful look on his face. Harry glanced down at his left
hand. The images of his
parents were becoming more indistinct. The starlight was slowly
diffusing out; even
as he watched, the faces of his father and mother gradually faded
away, and were
gone.
They heard a slight noise behind them, and turning around, saw Jeanne standing there.
"Remus has come back with Robert's parents," she
said soberly. "They've come to
bring him back to Singapore." She looked at Harry. "Shan
will be going with them.
I think she would like to speak to you, Harry."
Shan was sitting alone in the clearing, staring into the fire.
She looked up when Harry
came over, and sat down next to her.
He looked rather worriedly at her. "Are you all right?"
She nodded, then glanced at the figures of Jeanne and Lupin
in the distance, together
with two others, whom Harry guessed were Robert's parents.
"Robert's parents have asked me to go live with them,
and be their daughter," she said,
"And I've agreed."
"That's good, Shan," said Harry, for want of something better to say.
"And my sister has said that she and Professor Lupin will
come down to Singapore and
visit me, sometimes."
She turned to look at him, a serious expression on her face.
"Harry, you were a comfort to me many times, these past
few months," she said, "Especially
when my mother died. You've been a good friend; I want to thank
you for that."
Harry thought of Robert. The image of him, lifting the jade
dragon high in his hand, the green
light shooting out of it, came back to him. He wished, in his
heart, that Ping-Ping had never
given him the Translator.
"I could have done more," he said, "The Translator - "
But Jeanne had now come up from behind again.
"Shan, it's time to go," she said softly, interrupting
them, "Robert's father has brought him
back to Singapore already. His mother is waiting for you."
Shan nodded, to show she was coming. Jeanne looked affectionately
at her, then turned
and made her way back to where the others were.
Shan stood up, as did Harry.
"I want you to have something, Harry," she said,
turning to him. She took her jade dragon
pendant from around her neck, and holding it in her hands, transfigured
it, and then held it
out to him.
Harry bent his head to look at it. Instead of a dragon, the
jade was now oval in shape.
Carved on it were the delicate figures of several plants : a branch
of plum blossoms,
bamboo, and a pine tree.
"These are the Three Friends of Winter," said Shan.
"They represent enduring friendship,
because they live and bloom in winter, as true friendship still
flourishes in adversity. It's
often given by the Chinese, as a token of friendship."
Harry looked at the figurine in his hands.
"Shan, I can't take this," he said. "This was your father's gift to you!"
She shook her head, and her face was sad.
"I can't ever look at a jade dragon again without thinking
about what happened tonight,
Harry," she said. "My father is in my heart, and he
will always be there. I don't need the
pendant to remind me of him."
Something about her seemed different. There was a determined
look in her eyes. She held
her head up, confidently, and the old childishness, the sometimes
hopeless expression she
had on her face, was gone. Harry, looking at her, was reminded
of the starlight image Robert
had created in the Astronomy Tower.
"Everything is clear to me now," she said. "Even
though I don't know what lies in front of me.
During the New Year, Robert and I spent a lot of time, talking.
It was incredible; I'd never
heard him talk so much before. He kept saying he was worried about
me, and he made me
promise I would take care of myself, and believe in myself more,
when he was gone. After
what he's done for me, I won't let him down."
Jeanne was calling to them again, from a distance. Shan turned
and looked at her, then began
making her way over. Harry followed, still looking at the figurine
in his hands.
As they were approaching the group, he suddenly turned to her.
"Shan," he said, "Before you go - I was wondering
about Ping and Pong; where did they come
from? Have they always lived in the bamboo grove?"
She looked at him, surprised, then shook her head.
"I remember clearly the day they came," she said.
"They were gifts to my father, brought by a
visitor from abroad. I remember it well, because that was just
before my mother decided to
bring me to Singapore."
Harry was rather startled. "Who was the visitor?"
She looked thoughtfully at him, then shrugged.
"I don't know, Harry. I was only seven at the time. I
only remember what he looked like : he
wasn't Chinese; he had snow-white hair, and a hawk-like face,
and very penetrating blue eyes."
Harry looked at her, astonished. He was about to say something,
but they had now reached the
others.
Shan went to say goodbye to Ron and Hermione, shaking Ron's
hand and giving Hermione a
hug. Then she went over to Lupin, who bent down and kissed her.
She then turned to Jeanne,
who took her in her arms and held her there, for a long time.
Finally, Jeanne let her go. She said something softly to Shan,
who nodded, and then came back
to Harry.
"Good-bye, Harry," she said, looking soberly at him.
Harry looked at her, and suddenly words just didn't seem enough
to say goodbye. The events
of the past few months flashed past him : the first time he'd
met her and Robert, the time he'd
released Yang-Kang from under the bell with her help, the flight
they'd shared on the Silverwing
There didn't seem to be any words adequate for a time like
this, so instead he just leaned
forward, and quietly kissed her on the cheek.
She smiled rather sadly at him, then turned and went over to
the pleasant-faced woman who
must be Robert's mother, who had been standing by, watching, all
the while.
Ron and Hermione had come over to Harry, and were now standing
next to him. Robert's
mother embraced Shan, and the two of them then turned around and
faced the rest of
them.
Shan called something out in Chinese to Jeanne, who smiled
softly and nodded. She then
turned to look at Harry.
Harry wasn't sure why he said it.
"You'll write, won't you?"
Shan looked surprised, then gave a small nod, and smiled at
him. That was how he later
remembered her, smiling, as the woman placed an arm around her
and nodded at all of
them, before Disapparating the both of them away.
They stood around for a few moments, still looking at the spot
where the two had been
standing. Then, Lupin turned to the rest of them.
"We should be getting back, as well," he said quietly,
looking at each of them in turn,
before making his way over to where the jade cups were lying,
Jeanne at his side.
Harry and the others followed. As they gathered around the
Portkeys, Ron on one side
of him and Hermione on the other, he saw Jeanne looking around
at the landscape for
one last time, her face sad.
He turned around himself, for one last look. This was where
everything began, he thought,
and it was ending here, as well. He never wanted to come back.
The ruins of Deorg's
fortress were still visible in the distance, the cave and the
mirror lying beneath it, lost forever.
All around him, stretching to the horizon, the massive volcanoes
lifted themselves high into
the night sky, smoke issuing from their peaks. The bleak land
lay frozen in the grip of winter,
silent and asleep, waiting for the brief spring in the months
ahead to awaken them. But that
was in the future. At present, all seemed still and quiet; only
the sound of the wind could be
heard, high up among the cliffs, like the distant echo of a man's
voice calling a girl's name,
far away.
-------- end ----------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Those who have read Susan Cooper's The Grey King may
notice that I have taken several
lines from that book and used them here. Much of The Grey King
failed to make a lasting
impression on me, but these few lines have always come back to
haunt me over the years,
and I decided to weave them into Jade Dragon because they fit
in so well with the story.
The Snow Goose was written by Paul Gallico. I chose
it because it was also a story about love that
could never be fulfilled (because the main character, Philip Rhyader,
died in the end); and it is also a story
about appearances and the true person within. (Rhyader was a hunchback
whom everyone shunned
because of his appearance, but he was kind and gentle and had
a great heart and a love of all
wild and living things).
Thanks again to everyone who reviewed. I hope that everyone
who read Jade Dragon liked it
and found the story meaningful.
~ Kim/Starlight (gryffindor1970@yahoo.com)
January 2001
--