Chapter 42

It Begins Again - Part 2

KIARA

My trunk was packed, Harold was back in his cage on top of it. Chris, Chrissie and I were waiting in the crowded Entrance Hall with the rest of our fellow fourth-years for the carriages that would take us back to the Sub Cave. It was another beautiful summer's day. I supposed that my grandmothers' cottage and the area around it would be hot and leafy, a patchwork of colour spreading over the land as far as I could see, when I arrived that evening. The thought gave me a bit of pleasure, but then I remembered that I would be seeing my aunt, uncle and cousin over the holidays, and the pleasure died.

"Kiara!"

I looked around. Ferdinand Desjardin was hurrying up the stone steps into the castle. Beyond him, far across the grounds, I could see Mina helping Monsieur Legrand to back two of the giant horses into their harness. The Beauxbatons carriage was about to take off.

"We will see each uzzer again, I 'ope," said Ferdinand, as he reached me, holding out his hand. "I am 'oping to get a job 'ere, to improve my Eenglish."

"It's very good already," said Chrissie, in a strangled sort of voice. Ferdinand smiled at her; Chris just rolled his eyes.

"Goodbye, Kiara!" said Ferdinand, turning to go. "It 'az been a pleasure meeting you!"

My spirits couldn't help but be lifted slightly, as I watched Ferdinand hurry back across the lawns to Monsieur Legrand, his black hair fanning out behind him.

"Wonder how the Uagadou students are getting back?" said Chrissie. "D'you reckon they can steer that submarine without Kula?"

"Kula did not steer," said a gruff voice. "She stayed in her cabin and let us do the work." Outsider had come to see us about something. He looked worried. "Do any of you know where Kopa is? It's just that he went off with Sian a while ago, and I haven't seen them since."

Chris, Chrissie and I hadn't thought about where Sian was until Kovu had mentioned it; Chrissie had Lucifer in his basket, and she had carried down Sian's trunk as well as her own. We looked around, trying to see if Sian was somewhere in the crowd, when a laugh caught our attention. Chris, Outsider, Chrissie and I looked back out of the doors into the grounds, where we saw Sian, hand in hand with Kopa, coming towards us. They were talking and laughing. Sian's face was flushed and Kopa's eyes were bright, but I could tell that under his cloths, his cheeks were flushing, too. I figured that they had been saying goodbye in private (kissing, just that. Not anything else. What is wrong with you people?).

Sian and Kopa joined us then. "Sorry we took so long, guys," Sian said, stifling a giggle. Then she turned to Kopa, a sad smile on her face. "So, this is it, huh?"

"Yeah, this is it," Kopa said even more sadly. An awkward silence commenced then, but Outsider quickly interrupted it.

"Kopa, we need to get going soon." Sian and Kopa jumped then, and looked apologetically at us all.

"Sorry, Kov. You're right." He then turned to me, and I saw a smile in his eyes. "I know we don't know each other that well, Kiara, but I just want you to know that I'm sorry for all that you've been through, and I hope things will get better soon. And if you ever want to get in touch with me, Sian has my contact details (and I have hers), so you can give me a call if you want to talk. Plus, I'd really like to get to know you better."

I was taken aback by his words, but I appreciated them all the same. "Thanks, Kopa. I appreciate that." He smiled at me, and then turned back to his brother, who looked at Sian first.

"You're a good match for my brother," he told her gently. Sian beamed at him, as he turned to me. "I liked Diggs, she was always polite to me. Always. Even though I am fro Uagadou - with Kula," he added, scowling.

"Have you got a new Headmistress yet?" I said.

Outside shrugged. He held out his hand as Ferdinand had done, shook my hand, then Chris and Chrissie's.

Chris hesitated for a moment, then said, "Can Chrissie and I have your autograph?"

Sian smiled, as Outsider, who looked surprised, but gratified, signed two pieces of parchment for Chris and Chrissie, and then he and Kopa walked towards the doors. Just as they reached them, Sian shouted, "Kopa?"

Kopa and Outsider looked around at her. "What is it, Sian?" he asked her.

"I love you!" Sian said. Chris, Chrissie and I stood there, flabbergasted.

Kopa's eyes sparkled with joy, as he shouted back, "I love you, too!"

Sian and Kopa stood there, grinning like idiots at each other, until Outsider turned him around and they headed down the stone steps together.

"Well, so much for Dad saying Sian was going to be the last of us to ever get married," Chrissie muttered, as the horseless carriages trundled up towards us.

0000

The weather could not have been more different on our way back to Dover than it had been on our way to Dragon Mort in September of 2007. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Even underwater, we saw the water was clear and bright. Chris, Sian, Chrissie and I sat on our own in the Dawsons special Sub as always. Chris and Chrissie had thrown their own dress robes over Cattonia and Piggledon to stop them twittering continually; Harold was dozing with his head under his wing, and Lucifer was curled up in a spare seat like a large, furry black cushion. Chris, Sian, Chrissie and I talked more fully and freely than we had done that week, as the Subs sped us towards Dover. I felt as though Crighton's speech at the Leaving Feast had unblocked me, somehow. It was less painful to discuss what had happened now. We broke off our conversation about what action Crighton might be taking even now to stop Zira, only when it was time for lunch.

When Sian returned with her food and put her money back into her schoolbag, she dislodged a copy of the Daily Squabbler which she had been carrying in there.

I looked at it, unsure whether I really wanted to know what it might say, but Sian, seeing me look at it, said calmly, "There's nothing in there. You can look for yourself, but there's nothing at all. I've been checking every day. Just a small piece the day after the third task, saying you won the Tournament. They didn't even mention Georgia. Nothing about any of it. If you ask me, Sweets is forcing them to keep quiet."

"She'll never be able to keep Peter quiet," I said. "Not on a story like this."

"Oh, Peter hasn't written anything at all since the third task," said Sian, in an oddly constrained sort of voice. "As a matter of fact," she added, her voice now trembling slightly, "Peter Meter isn't going to be writing anything at all for a while. Not unless he wants me to spill the beans on him."

"What are you talking about?" said Chris.

"I found out how he was listening in on private conversations when he wasn't supposed to be coming into the grounds," said Sian in a rush.

I had the impression that Sian had been dying to tell us this for days, but that she had restrained herself in the light of everything else that had happened.

"How was he doing it?" I said at once.

"How did you find out?" said Chrissie, staring at her.

"Does this have anything to do with that beetle you gave me last week?" Chris said suddenly, looking suspicious.

Sian blushed at Chris' question, before she turned to me, and said, "Well, it was you, really, who gave me the idea, Kiara."

"Did I?" I said, perplexed. "How?"

"Bugging," said Sian happily.

"But you said they didn't work - "

"Oh, not electronic bugs," said Sian. "No, you see ... Peter Meter" - Sian's voice trembled with quiet triumph - "is an unregistered Animagus. He can turn - "

Sian pulled a small sealed glass jar out of her bag.

" - into a beetle."

"You're kidding," said Chrissie. "You haven't ... he's not ..."

"Oh, yes he is," said Sian happily, brandishing the jar at us.

Inside were a few twigs and leaves, and one large, fat beetle.

"That's never - you're kidding - " Chrissie whispered, lifting the jar to her eyes.

"No, I'm not," said Sian, beaming. "I caught him on the window-sill in the hospital wing. Look very closely, and you'll notice the markings around his antennae are exactly like those foul glasses he wears."

I looked and saw that she was quite right, as Chris said to her, "So that's why you wanted me to keep that beetle in my dormitory; because this beetle's an Animagus, who is a man, and boy's can't be trusted in the girls' dormitories - "

"Precisely, Rickers," said Sian proudly. "And it's also why I told you that he was an animal I wanted to study over the summer, because I didn't want anyone else knowing about it."

"Nice one, S.D.," I said. Then I remembered something. "There was a beetle on the statue that night we heard Mina telling Monsieur Legrand about her dad!"

"Exactly," said Sian. "And Kopa pulled a beetle off of his cloths after we'd had our conversation by the river. And unless I'm very much mistaken, Peter was perched on the window-sill of the Divination class the day your scar hurt. He's been buzzing around for stories all year."

"When we saw Malty under that tree ..." said Chrissie slowly.

"She was talking to him, in her hand," said Sian. "She knew, of course. That's how he's been getting all those nice little interviews with the Snake-Eyes. They won't care that he was doing something illegal, as long as they were giving him horrible stuff about us and Mina."

Sian took the glass jar back from Chrissie and smiled at the beetle, which buzzed angrily against the glass.

"I've told him I'll let him out when we get back to Dover," said Sian. "I've put an Unbreakable Charm on the jar, you see, so he can't transform. And I've told him he's to keep his quill to himself for a whole year. See if he can't break the habit of writing horrible lies about people."

As Sian finished this, she smiled serenely, and placed the beetle back inside her schoolbag, as a blazing light filled our section of the sub, and Dani Malty, followed by Crate and Gabber were there, having just come in by Transporter Beam (we had learnt that the Transporter Beam had been put in place earlier that morning, so friends could visit each other if they wanted to, and for the Prefects to check occasionally that there was no trouble going on). Rea-Bradley was not with them.

"Very clever, Dawson," said Malty.

She, Crate and Gabber looked more pleased with themselves, more arrogant and more menacing, than I had ever seen them.

"So," said Malty, advancing slowly towards us, and looking around at us, a smirk quivering on her lips. "You caught some pathetic reporter, and Pride-Lander's one of Crighton's favourite girls again. Big deal."

Her smirk widened. Crate and Gabber leered.

"Trying not to think about it, are we?" said Malty softly, looking at the four of us. "Trying to pretend it hasn't happened?"

"Get out," I said.

I had not been near Malty since I had watched her muttering to Crate and Gabber during Crighton's speech about Georgia. I felt a kind of ringing in my ears. My hand gripped my wand under my robes.

"You've picked the losing side, Pride-Lander! I warned you! I told you you ought to choose your company more carefully, remember? When we met just before we got Sorted, first day at Dragon Mort? I told you not to hang around with riff-raff like this!" She jerked her head at Chris, Sian and Chrissie. "Too late now, Pride-Lander! They'll be the first to go, now the Scarlet Lady's back! Sackbrains, Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first! Well - second - Diggs was the f - "

It was as though someone had exploded a box of fireworks within the compartment. Blinded by the blaze of spells that had blasted from every direction, deafened by a series of bangs, I blinked, and looked down at the floor.

Malty, Crate and Gabber were all lying unconscious in the middle of the room. Chris, Sian, Chrissie and I were on our feet, the four of us having used a different hex. Nor were we the only ones to have done so.

"We've been with Beth, Kestrel, Merida and the others next door," said Tanya, as she and Geri stood next to me, "and when we saw your head pop up, Kiara, Geri and I looked in to see what was going on. I say we made good timing to come and help, don't you think, Ger?"

"Definitely, Tan," said Geri, as she and Tanya went to look at the damages done on Malty, Crate and Gabber. They both had their wands out, and were careful to tread on the three unconscious girls' fingers as they studied them.

"Interesting effect," said Geri, as she looked down at Crate. "Who used the Furnunculus curse?"

"I did," I said.

"Odd," said Geri lightly. "I used Jelly-Legs. Looks as though those two shouldn't be mixed. She seems to have sprouted tentacles all over her face. Well, let's not leave them here, they don't add much to the décor."

Chrissie, Geri and I kicked, rolled and pushed the unconscious Malty, Crate and Gabber - each of whom looked distinctly the worse for the jumble of jinxes with which they had been hit - out of our eye-line, and into a darker part of the compartment.

"Exploding Snap, anyone?" said Tanya, pulling out a pack of cards.

We were halfway through our fifth game when I decided to ask them.

"You going to tell us, then?" I said to Geri. "Who you were blackmailing?"

"Oh," said Geri darkly. "That."

"It doesn't matter," said Tanya, shaking her head impatiently. "It wasn't anything important. Not now, anyway."

"We've given up," said Geri, shrugging.

But Chris, Sian, Chrissie and I kept on asking, and finally Tanya said, "All right, all right, if you really want to know ... it was Lynn Baxter."

"Baxter?" I said sharply. "Are you saying she was involved in - "

"Nah," said Geri gloomily. "Nothing like that. Stupid cow. She wouldn't have the brains."

"Well, what, then?" said Chris.

Tanya hesitated, then said, "You remember that bet we had with her, at the Quidditch Friendly? About how Ireland would win, but Outsider would get the Snitch?"

"Yeah," Chris, Chrissie and I said slowly.

"Well, the cow paid us in leprechaun gold she'd caught from the Irish mascots."

"So?"

"So," said Tanya impatiently, "it vanished, didn't it? By next morning, it had gone!"

"But - it must've been an accident, mustn't it?" said Sian.

Geri laughed very bitterly. "Yeah, that's what we thought, at first. We thought if we just wrote to her, and told her she'd made a mistake, she'd cough up. But nothing doing. Ignored us. We kept trying to talk to her about it at Dragon Mort, but she was always making some excuse to get away from us."

"In the end, she turned pretty nasty," said Tanya. "Told us we were too young to gamble, and she wasn't giving us anything."

"So we asked for our money back," said Geri, glowering.

"She didn't refuse!" gasped Sian.

"Right in one," said Tanya.

"But that was all your savings!" said Chrissie.

"Tell me about it," said Geri. "'Course, we found out what was going on in the end. Leah Jones' mum had had a bit of trouble getting money off Baxter as well. Turns out she's in big trouble with the fauns. Borrowed loads of gold off them. A gang of them cornered her in the woods after the Quidditch Friendly and took all the gold she had, and it still wasn't enough to cover all her debts. They followed her all the way to Dragon Mort to keep an eye on her. She's lost everything gambling. Hasn't got two Galleons to rub together. And you know how the idiot tried to pay the fauns back?"

"How?" I said.

"She put a bet on you," said Tanya. "Put a big bet on you to win the Tournament. Bet against the fauns."

"So that's why she kept trying to help me win!" I said. "Well - I did win, didn't I? So she can pay you your gold!"

"Nope," said Geri, shaking her head. "The fauns play as dirty as her. They say you drew with Diggs, and Baxter was betting you'd outright win. So Baxter had to run for it. She made a run for it right after the third task."

Geri sighed deeply, and started dealing out the cards again.

The rest of the journey passed pleasantly enough; I wished it could have gone on all summer, in fact, and that I would never have arrived at Dover ... but as I hard learnt the hard way that year, time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead, and all too soon the Dragon Mort Subs were slowing down, as the claws to pull them out of the water plunged in. Once the Subs had reached a stop beside the walking platforms, I heard the usual confusion and noise that filled the platforms as students began to disembark. Chris, Sian and Chrissie struggled out past Malty, Crate and Gabber, carrying their trunks.

I, however, stayed put. "Tanya - Geri - wait a moment."

The twins turned. I pulled open my trunk, and drew out my Triwizard winnings.

"Take it," I said, and I thrust the sack into Geri's hands.

"What?" said Tanya, looking flabbergasted.

"Take it," I repeated firmly. "I don't want it."

"You're mental," said Geri, trying to push it back at me.

"No, I'm not," I said. "You take it, and get inventing. It's for the joke shop."

"She is mental," Tanya said, in an almost awed voice.

"Listen," I said firmly. "If you don't take it, I'm throwing it down the drain. I don't want it and I don't need it. But I could do with a few laughs. We could all do with a few laughs. I've got a feeling we're going to need them more than usual before long."

"Kiara," said Geri weakly, weighing the money bag in her hands, "there's got to be a thousand Galleons in here."

"Yeah," I said, grinning. "Think how many Further Funny Fingers that is."

The twins stared at me.

"Just don't tell the Dawsons where you got it ... although Sian might not be so keen for you to join the Ministry anymore, come to think of it ..."

"Kiara," Tanya began, but I pulled out my wand.

"Look," I said flatly, "take it, or I'll hex you. I know some good ones now. Just do me one favour, OK? Buy Chrissie some new dress robes, and say they're from you ..." (Sorry, Chrissie - and Sian, for that matter - but I just don't like them)

I left the compartment before I could say another word, ignoring Malty, Crate and Gabber, who were still lying on the floor, covered in hex marks.

My grandmothers were waiting for me below. Mr Dawson stood close by them. He hugged me very tightly when he saw me, and whispered in my ear, "I think my wife will let you come to us later in the summer. Keep in touch, Kiara."

"See you, Kiara," said Chrissie, hugging me.

"Take care, Kiara," said Sian, hugging me, too.

"Bye, Kiara!" said Chris, and he did something he had never done before that moment - he kissed me on the cheek. Sian and Chrissie "Oooooh"ed him cheekily, but Chris just said, "Shut up!" Sian and Chrissie giggled behind their hands.

"Kiara - thanks," Geri muttered, while Tanya nodded fervently at her side (I should point out here that Tanya and Geri were staying at the Dawsons, because they didn't want anything to do with their mother, and the Dawsons were the closest relatives they had, and that's why they decided to stay with them. They were of age, after all).

I winked at them, then turned to my grandmothers. They hugged me warmly, and then we went out of the barrier and to their car. There was no point worrying yet, I told myself at that point, as I got into the passenger seat of Grandmother Sarabi's car.

As Mina had said, what would come, would come ... and I would have to meet it when it did.

And so, there you go. My fourth year is done - or, as those of us who were close to Sian would like to call it, the Year Sian Fell in Love. It came as a shock to all of us. My story isn't over yet, and I'm sorry to say that the worst is yet to come. There are some good parts to come too, but we'll get there later. So, until my fifth book, I have just one final word to say here:

Farewell

AN: So, there you go, the fourth book done. I'm going to do a couple of one-shots for Jane Eyre this Sunday and sometime next week, but the first chapter of the fifth book will be posted next Sunday, that I can promise you. So, I shall see you then. Peace!