Luna Lovegood's Arc

Chapter 18 of 19

The next morning the Ministry official returned with three assistants. She unrolled her scroll on a folding table and read Luna the plan. The Ministry would post its own keepers at the tree line. They would carry the food. They would set the hours and cross the boundary. "You have done well," the woman said, not looking up. "Now trained handlers will take it from here." Luna felt her stomach drop. Strangers would feed the mother Snorkack. And the mother trusted only her hand. Luna tried to explain. The creature knew her scent. It had eaten from her palm because she returned its young. "It won't come for a stranger," she said. The official waved this away. "A Snorkack is a Snorkack. It eats gurdyroot. Anyone can hold out gurdyroot." She sent one assistant to the tree line with a fistful of the treat. The man walked out into the grass. He held the gurdyroot high and waited. The pavilion crowd watched from beneath the blossoms. Nothing came. Minutes passed. The man stepped closer to the trees. A branch cracked deep in the forest, then silence. The mother did not show. The herd smelled a stranger and stayed hidden. "Give it time," the official said, but her voice had thinned. That was when Hagrid pushed through the crowd. He had grown up minding beasts most wizards feared, and Luna had called on him before. He looked at the assistant in the field and shook his shaggy head. "Yeh can't force trust," he told the official. "That animal picks its person. Take Luna out o' this an' yeh get nothin'." The official's chin lifted, but she did not argue with the man who had signed the herd's record. Then the crowd went quiet. Dumbledore came down the pavilion steps, his starred robes bright against the dark trunks. He had backed Luna before every doubting official and enforced her rules with authority no keeper could match. He studied the empty field, then the woman with the scroll. "Send Miss Lovegood out," he said. "Then decide who owns this trust." The official hesitated, then nodded. Luna took the gurdyroot and walked out alone. She stood where the assistant had failed. She waited, palm open. The pavilion held its breath. At last the mother stepped from the shadows, striped coat bright, ears calm. It crossed the grass without fear and ate from Luna's hand while the whole crowd watched. Then it turned and slipped back into the trees. The official rolled up her scroll. "The Ministry cannot manage what only you can approach," she said. "The site stays under your charge. We will fund it and record it." Luna had kept her field. But the woman added one line before she left. "The wizarding world wants more than a hand feeding. Soon they will want the herd itself, in the open, counted." Luna understood. Feeding one mother was no longer enough.