Emma Potter; Going to War

88: Going, Going, Gone

I was bleeding. Clutching my right hand in my left and swearing under my breath, I shouldered open my bedroom door. There was a crunch of breaking china: I had trodden on a cup of cold tea that had been sitting on the floor outside my bedroom door. 

"What the actual — ?" 

I looked around; the landing of number four, Privet Drive, was deserted. Possibly the cup of tea was Dudley's idea of a clever booby trap. Keeping my bleeding hand elevated, I tried scraped the fragments of cup together with the other hand, but no joy. My brother got up and gathered the pieces and threw them into the already crammed bin just visible inside our bedroom door. 

Then he dragged me across to the bathroom to run my finger under the tap. Which was not needed, I could do it myself. I scowled. It was stupid, pointless, irritating beyond belief that we still had four days left of being unable to perform magic . . .this could be done in seconds and I'd give Dudley a pig's tail again.

 I used a large wad of toilet paper to mop up as much of the tea as I could, before returning to my bedroom and slamming the door behind me.Harry and I had spent the morning completely emptying our school trunks for the first time since we had packed them six years ago

. At the start of the intervening school years, we had merely skimmed off the topmost three quarters of the contents and replaced or updated them, leaving a layer of general debris at the bottom — old quills,desiccated beetle eyes, single socks that no longer fit. 

Minutes previously, I had plunged my hand into this mulch, experienced a stabbing pain in the fourth finger of my right hand, and withdrawn it to see a lot of blood. I now proceeded a little more cautiously. 

Kneeling down beside the trunk again, I groped around in the bottom and, after retrieving an old badge that flickered feebly between SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY and POTTER STINKS, a cracked and worn-out Sneakoscope, and a gold locket inside which a note signed R.A.B. had been hidden, I finally discovered the sharp edge that had done the damage.

 I recognized it at once. It was a two-inch-long fragment of the enchanted mirror that our dead godfather, Sirius, had given me. I laid it aside and felt cautiously around the trunk for the rest, but nothing more remained of my godfather's last gift except powdered glass, which clung to the deepest layer of debris like glittering grit. 

I sat up and examined the jagged piece on which I had cut myself, seeing nothing but my own bright hazel eye reflected back at me. It was quite big. I snapped it in two unequal halves and wordlessly handed on half to my brother.

"Just in case" I said.

 Then I placed the fragment on top of that morning's Daily Prophet, which lay unread on my bed, and attempted to stem the sudden upsurge of bitter memories, the stabs of regret and oflonging the discovery of the broken mirror had occasioned, by attacking the rest of the rubbish in the trunk. 

It took another hour to empty it completely, throw away the useless items, and sort the remainder in piles according to whether or not he would need them from now on. My school robes, cauldron, parchment, quills, and most of my textbooks were piled in a corner, to be left behind. 

I wondered what our aunt and uncle would do with them; burn them in the dead of night, probably, as if they were the evidence of some dreadful crime. 

"I still think you should come with me" said Harry, whose own pile was much bigger than mine. "We're stronger together"

I shook my head and grinned, "you act like I'm going to go fight the entire war without you."

My Muggle clothing, potion-making kit, certain books, two photograph albums Hagrid had once given me,  a stack of letters, and his wand had been repacked into an old rucksack. In a front pocket were the Marauder's Map and the locket with the note signed R.A.B.inside it. The locket was accorded this place of honor not because it was valuable — in all usual senses it was worthless — but because of what it had cost to attain it.