All the way back, although Professor Watson had not forbidden the young wizards to talk, everyone kept a strange kind of quiet.
As they left Avalon Prison again, the prisoners out on work detail were still sweating beneath the slowly sinking sun, their hoes rising and falling in the same weary rhythm as before. The young wizards passed them without looking, or looked, and quickly looked away.
They crossed the open country once more and boarded the great oak ship that waited there for them.
After an hour of gliding across the shimmering lake, now turned the colour of old copper by the low sun, they were back in the barbican where they had first arrived.
"Everyone, please sign your names on this confidentiality agreement. The magic within the agreement will bind your conduct, so that you will be unable to reveal anything about Avalon to anyone else."
The leader of the Hit Wizards, the same stern man who had inspected them so thoroughly at dawn, handed back their confiscated wands one by one, brisk and businesslike, and had each of them sign their name on a long sheet of parchment.
Harry thought it was completely unnecessary.
Having watched a life dissipate before his very eyes, like a gust of wind across an empty field, Harry had no interest at all in sharing anything with anyone. He signed his name and took his wand back and felt the familiar warmth of it settle into his palm, and he did not feel comforted.
"Professor Watson—"
But someone felt differently.
Theodore raised his hand, looking pleadingly at Professor Watson. "Will we have another chance to visit Avalon Prison?"
"The study trips will remain at Hogwarts as a tradition, and they will take more varied forms as time goes on. My plan is that every year from now on, the school will choose some places, and a few of the Heads of House will lead you to visit them—"
Bryan said kindly, "So yes, there will be chances, Mr. Nott."
Comforted as he was by the answer, Theodore also wore a look of wistful sorrow.
That meant he had only two more chances to visit Avalon Prison, one for each of the years he still had left at Hogwarts, while his father—convicted of taking part in Death Eater terrorist activities—would have to spend at least thirteen years locked up in Avalon before he could be granted parole.
Bryan saw Theodore's sorrow. After a moment's thought, he went on, speaking to Theodore, "As you all know, the wizarding world is in turmoil right now. Once things have calmed down a little, the Ministry may consider allowing family visits."
Theodore was stunned for a few seconds. Then he nodded, hard, twice.
That was already an unexpected delight, more than he had dared hope for when he'd raised his hand. He couldn't ask for more.
"Can I ask one more thing, Professor?"
The Weasley twins, after all, had more mental resilience than the rest of them put together; judging by their faces, the two of them had already shaken off the gloom that death had cast over the students, or at least tucked it somewhere out of sight.
Fred pointed at the oak in the distance that soared into the clouds and asked, with a touch of awe, "This place…"
He trailed off, then pointed instead at the ground beneath his feet, at the trampled earth of the barbican. "Is this the real Avalon, Professor?"
"No, it isn't, Fred—"
Professor Watson said with a smile, seeing the twins' somewhat crestfallen faces, "There's no need to be disappointed, you two. The real Isle of Avalon is many times more terrifying than Azkaban."
Having said that, Bryan offered the bewildered young wizards no further explanation, whatever questions crowded onto their faces. The tip of his raised wand once again released a golden barrier that flowed like water, and it wrapped itself around them all.
"Have you two noticed—"
Harry heard Ginny say to Fred and George, her voice was low and curious, "Professor Watson always gets your names right. He's the only professor who never mixes the two of you up."
And it did seem to be true. Even McGonagall, on occasion, had been known to get it wrong.
Harry was still marvelling at this small discovery when the world around him, mild as a warm breeze, suddenly vanished before his eyes.
Like being stuffed into a washing-machine drum, he was tumbled about violently for several seconds, everything was spinning and blurring, and then, catching him off guard, the roar in his ears fell away again.
Crack!
The world froze into place, and the young wizards, dizzy and unsteady, toppled this way and that, one after another, before the castle, at the foot of the marble steps, in the muddy ground.
Ssss…
Before Harry could even complain about his robes being soaked with muddy water, the cold wind rolling in off the grounds made him draw one sharp breath after another, the damp autumn chill of Hogwarts hit him like a slap after the mild warmth of the island.
"Oh, why didn't we just appear inside the castle?"
Harry shook out his sodden robes, shivering as he muttered.
But the answer to that question soon presented itself.
It was already dinnertime. In the Great Hall, the younger students and the members of the delegation were already eating, sparsely scattered along tables in a hall that, for once, looked half-empty; and a whole crowd of dizzy, mud-caked students dropping out of thin air between the long tables would hardly have made a quiet arrival.
But the moment he stepped into the hall, Harry put his wet robes out of his mind, his expression turned a little startled and suspicious.
He looked over at the Slytherin table first.
Malfoy and Parkinson were sitting in their usual places, slowly enjoying their dinner… which was nothing to make a fuss about, on its own. But Harry turned his eyes next to the Gryffindor table.
Ron and Lavender, however, were not at that long table.
In the blink of an eye, he ruled out the possibility that Ron was crouching in some corner under the Invisibility Cloak, watching Malfoy.
There was no need for that; in the Great Hall, Ron could watch Malfoy's every move quite openly, couldn't he?
A bad feeling welled up from the bottom of Harry's heart, and his expression grew ever graver.
Had something happened while he was away?! Or else Ron and Lavender had simply been so wrapped up in their dating that they'd tossed aside the task he and Hermione had given them.
Their sudden appearance inside the school also startled the people in the hall—after all, as everyone knew, Apparition was not allowed at school, and heads turned all along the tables to stare at the newcomers.
Besides, having pitched headlong into the mud, every one of them looked so thoroughly bedraggled that the younger students snickered behind their hands, and one small Hufflepuff even pointed at them openly.
Most of the returning students headed for the staircase in the Entrance Hall, meaning to go upstairs and change out of their cold, wet clothes before anything else, and Harry meant to do the same.
Since Ron and Lavender weren't in the Great Hall, the most likely place for them was the Gryffindor common room.
He glanced sideways at Hermione, and his heart gave another lurch.
The same worried look showed on Hermione's face, but she wasn't looking at the Gryffindor table. Instead, she kept staring at the second-floor landing, her eyes fixed there as if waiting for someone to appear.
"What's wrong, Hermione?" Harry couldn't help asking.
"Professor Watson… it's nothing, Harry."
At the staff table, the professors were all back in their seats, their gazes full of interest on the clamouring young wizards in the Entrance Hall.
Professor Dumbledore sat in the middle, chuckling as he said something to Professor McGonagall, whose lips were faintly pursed, as though she were trying very hard not to look at the state of her students' robes.
At the delegation's table, Roya and a few others were excitedly waving their arms at them, as though desperate to talk, to ask about everything.
"Let's go find Ron in the common room first."
Hermione had worked out the same thing he had. She pointed to her mud-stained robes and gave Roya and the others an apologetic smile, mouthing later across the hall.
"Ron, he—"
"Let's find him first, then we'll see, Harry."
The spiral staircase was packed with students heading up to tidy themselves, and Hermione quietly but firmly cut off Harry's question before it could turn into something anyone else might overhear.
They jogged upstairs with the flow of the crowd and were jammed up for a little while in the corridor outside the Gryffindor common room, where the Fat Lady, who was enjoying a small piece of raisin cake in her frame, glared impatiently at the chaotic throng of dripping students crowding her doorway.
Harry and Hermione queued for about ten minutes before they finally squeezed into the common room.
With one sweep of the eyes, Harry's and Hermione's brows furrowed at the very same moment.
The students who had just come in were all rushing up the stairs on each side to their dormitories to change their clothes, leaving damp footprints across the floor.
On the sofas scattered casually around the round common room, including the one before the fireplace with its small fire, where the three of them usually sat, there was no sign of Ron or Lavender.
As he and Hermione looked at each other, the sense of foreboding filling Harry's heart grew even more heavier.
"Do you think—"
Harry was just about to ask Hermione what she thought—
"Harry!"
After a few thumps from the boys' dormitory stairs, a voice tinged with alarm drew Harry's and Hermione's eyes toward it.
It was Neville, Seamus, and Dean. They looked as if they had seen something they could scarcely believe, and one and all, still badly shaken, they stared at Harry.
It was Neville who had called out to him.
Under Harry's puzzled gaze, Neville pointed at the stairs with one hand, panting slightly, his round face was pale. "You'd better come up…"
"Hermione!"
A call in almost the same tone rose from the girls' dormitory side too. Hermione's roommate, Parvati, wearing much the same look as Neville and the others, came leaping down the stairs in a flustered rush. "I don't know who did it, Hermione!"
Parvati, still shaken, pointed at the stairs as well. "But it looks like someone has gone through your things!"
'Someone had gone through Hermione's things…'
Stunned, Neville gave a sudden twitch and hurriedly spoke up, as though he'd only now remembered to say it. "It's the same on your side, Harry!"
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