I thought I would end up alone on Hallowe'en eve; Ginny had skipped the Feast entirely, preferring to remain in her dormitory, and the three agents of good had snuck away from the castle around midday. I was not a naturally effusive person, so my social circle had not substantially expanded since arriving at school.
I hadn't counted on Neville, though, who seemed to be as solitary as I most of the time. When he saw me alone, he brightened and sat down beside me.
"Where are your cousins and their crowd?" he asked me.
I knew Neville was absolutely trustworthy, yet I couldn't reveal the truth to him. "They disappeared today; Merlin knows what they're up to."
He looked a little crestfallen. "Oh, I thought maybe you knew. I worry about them."
"So do I," I said fervently; though logically I knew they'd be all right, I couldn't stop myself from being a little anxious on their behalves.
"What do you think of all this, then?" he asked, gesturing grandly at the live bats, dancing, lit pumpkins, and billowing orange drapes.
"It's quite imaginative," I said. "We never had anything quite so grand in America."
He nodded, but seemed to be distracted. Finally, with an almost pained look on his face, he said, "Susan, you know there's a Hogsmeade weekend coming up in a week or so."
"Yes," I said, not cottoning on.
"I was thinking, if you weren't planning on going with your family, that you and I could go. Together."
For the first time in months, I was genuinely taken aback. No one had ever told me this part. Was it because I'd never told anyone? Or was it because they wanted me to figure it out for myself?
Now I had to rely on my own judgment, not foreknowledge. Did I want to go to the Hogsmeade weekend with Neville?
I looked at him. He looked so earnest, and I found I wanted to brush the cowlick out of his eyes to get a better look at his boyish face. He still had a bit of baby fat on him, but I could tell it wouldn't be much longer before he would be a man.
Since I barely knew him in the future, I didn't think of him as an adult, the way I did about my parents and Ron and Hermione. He was just another Hogwarts student, and one whom I quite liked, if I wanted to be honest. He was so dedicated to Herbology, and I loved how attached he'd become to our rowan tree. He was not funny, and not that quick or clever, but neither was I that funny or witty. He was honest and serious and, above all, kind.
I smiled at him. "I'd love to."
We sat together for the rest of the Feast, stealing nervous, grinning glances at each other. At the end of the night, we walked back to the common room together, but simply said, "See you tomorrow" to each other before parting.
It took me a little while to fall asleep, but when I dreamt, I was a little younger and in another time.
It is the summer before my fifth year, and I have finally learned what my mission is. Aunt Mi-Mi comes over every night she can get away to tell me everything she can remember about that year. I take notes and read them during the next day so that I can tell everything back to Mi-Mi when she comes that night. I wish Aunt Mi-Mi were happier with all that I've learned, but she just seems tired.
"Your first huge help to us will be at Hallowe'en," she says, and I start to take notes. "HALLOWE'EN," I title the page of my notebook.
"The locket is in the Wood of Lost Souls in North Wales. I'll have to show you on a map. The locket is the first Horcrux we three will destroy together. It is a huge accomplishment, and we almost don't make it out."
She pauses, and I see her closing her eyes against the onslaught of memory. "The ghosts flee the forest at sunset, so we move in. You've told us that the locket is in an aerie in the tallest tree in the wood. We've scouted it out from afar, so we know which one it is.
"Harry brings his Firebolt, of course, and Ron takes his broom too. I can't fly to save my life, so I let them go up by themselves. They get to the top of this old, old spruce, and there's a nest nestled in the top branches. It looks like a regular old nest, but there's only one egg, and it looks like it's made of black marble, and it's huge.
"Harry is impulsive." She sighs. "He starts to knock on the egg to see if it's hollow, how thick it is, and it cracks. This eldritch red light beams out, and the light . . . it has a physical presence, almost. It shoots into the sky, and that drives Harry's broom down. Meanwhile, Harry was looking down at it, so he's blinded."
I'm not breathing. My father, this is my father she's talking about --
"Basically, he's in an uncontrolled freefall on his broom in the middle of a dense forest, and he's blind. I see him tumbling towards me, and I scream for Ron to catch him. Ron swoops down and gets him around the waist, but Harry's blacked out. He drops the egg, but I manage to catch it and not look at the light.
"The light is making a red beacon in the air, and I can't make it stop. So I open the egg the rest of the way as Ron takes Harry back to the ground. As soon as the egg is completely broken, the light goes away, and I'm left holding a broken eggshell and -- Slytherin's locket. It's old and dull gold. It feels wrong in my hand.
"Ron asks me what we should do. Harry's out cold, but we've got the locket. We don't know how to destroy it, but we don't think Harry knows either.
"At that point . . . ." She shudders, and I lean forward in my chair. "At that point, the ghosts start coming back."
I look at her in horror. "It was Hallowe'en!!"
"Yes," she says, "but Regulus Black knew that no matter how well he hid the Horcrux, someone else could come along and find it. He had no way of knowing if that someone would be good or evil, so he enchanted that eggshell. That red beacon was a way for the ghosts to know that people were trespassing in their forest and disturbing their graves."
"You weren't disturbing their graves!" I cried indignantly.
"Have you tried reasoning with ghosts?" Aunt Mi-Mi asked sardonically. "The spell convinced them that we were essentially grave robbers. Of course, we didn't know that at the time; we found Regulus's diary later."
"What did you do?" I cried, almost in anguish.
"Well, first I notice a weird white light that's starting to grow. It's almost as if the sun is rising, but it's not even midnight, so that's impossible. Then I start seeing figures -- the first is a general of some sort, galloping forward on a horse. They're both ghosts, of course.
"I scream. Ron starts yelling that we need to get out right away. But Harry's still not responding.
"'You need to fly him back!' I tell Ron.
"'And just how are you going to get out of here?' he yells.
"But I just run up to where Harry's slumped over and haul him onto Ron's broom, which is hovering a few inches above the ground. I remember thinking that it was a good thing that the Dursleys starved him, because otherwise I couldn't possibly have done it.
"'I'm not leaving you!' Ron shouts.
"'Don't be daft,' I say, and I jump onto Harry's Firebolt. I'm still clutching the locket in one hand. The broom doesn't like me one bit -- it starts bucking around. But Ron jumps onto his broom behind Harry, gets one arm around Harry's waist, and flies over to the Firebolt. With his other hand he grabs the Firebolt's shaft and we start flying up and away.
"When we level off, Ron can't rely on gravity to keep Harry leaning against him, so he has to grab him with both arms. Then I'm left to fend for myself on the Firebolt. We're hundreds of miles from Hogwarts; Harry's not moving; I can barely fly.
"We decide to touch down as soon as possible, so we do, at the outskirts of a medium-sized Welsh town.
"'We can't very well just parade in looking for witches and wizards to help with our broomsticks slung over our shoulders,' Ron says.
"But finally my brain starts working. 'Ron,' I say, 'it's Hallowe'en! We can just be dressed up as witches and wizards!'
"He stares at me in wonder. Then --" She stops and, uncharacteristically, blushes. "Well."
I'm too curious to leave it alone. "What?"
Quietly she says, "He says, 'I knew there was a reason I fell in love with you.' He'd never actually said he loved me before then, not for real."
I grin. Uncle Ron and Aunt Mi-Mi's relationship is famous amongst all their Hogwarts classmates for being the longest one ever carried on without the participants actually knowing about it.
"So we Transfigure our street clothes into Hogwarts robes, figuring any real wizard or witch will recognize us. We keep our broomsticks as staffs. We cast Mobilicorpus on Harry, but make it look like we're carrying him between us.
"We go into a couple pubs, saying we're kids on holiday doing a cross-country trip. They're all quite kind to us, and I have a couple pounds on me, so I buy us some cider. All the people just figure Harry's pissed.
"Finally in the third pub, we see someone's eyes go wide, and as we're leaving, a woman in Muggle clothes pulls us aside. 'Are you mad?' she says. 'Why aren't you lot at Hogwarts?'
"We have no idea of knowing whose side she's on, so we just say, 'We went out for a bit of fun, and our friend here knocked himself out Apparating. Can you get us to a Floo?'"
"So we go back to her house, and she lets us use her Floo. We Floo to the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade, and Aberforth is there to meet us. We get Harry up to the castle to see Madam Pomfrey quickly. She's quite concerned about him, since he got in the way of a curse. But the spell damage is slight -- he won't be able to see for a couple days, but that's all."
"But how do you destroy the locket?" I implore.
She looks at me and smiles. "Another time, Susan."
The dream dissolved, and I was left to pull the covers tighter, knowing what was befalling my friends at that very moment.