Harry Potter and The Jade Dragon

Chapter 30 ~ Last

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 then...why 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 :