Luna Lovegood's Arc

Chapter 9 of 19

The last root was gone. The young Snorkack cried again, and the cracked rune spat sparks. Beyond the light, the mother slammed the barrier. Another rune split. Luna knelt by the shaking creature and understood the truth she had been avoiding. She could not keep it. Every cry weakened the wall, and every hour drew the herd closer to breaking through. Proof did not need a prisoner. She had the record now, signed and sealed. The creature needed its mother. "I have to give it back," Luna said. Hermione stared at her. She had spent hours turning Luna's killing trap into a gentle one, and she hated waste. "You caught the only living Snorkack ever recorded," she said. "You want to open the wall and hand it away?" "The wall is failing anyway," Luna said. "If it breaks, the herd comes through angry. If I carry the young one out, they follow it, not us." Harry looked from the sparking runes to the pacing shapes in the trees. He had cleared this forest path once, thorn by thorn. He trusted a plan he could see. "Then we do it fast," he said. "Before the next stone goes." Luna lifted the young Snorkack into the soft flower-woven net, the same gentle mesh that had first caught it. It did not bruise the creature. It only cradled it. Then she took her wand and touched the ground. Faint marks glowed where the mother's feet had pressed the earth again and again, always at one place along the barrier. That was where she waited. "Open the gap there," Luna told Hermione. "Only there." Hermione's jaw tightened, but she raised her wand. Harry stood ready beside the stones. Luna carried the net to the marked spot and knelt just inside the light. "Now," she said. Hermione dropped a single length of the barrier. The mother lunged. Luna did not run. She set the net down in the open gap and drew the mesh away, freeing the young one onto the bare ground between them. Then she stepped back, hands empty. The young Snorkack ran to its mother. The huge creature curled its striped body around it and went still. The crying stopped. Behind them the whole herd went quiet at once. "Close it," Luna said, and Hermione sealed the light. The herd did not charge. The mother nosed her calf, then turned and led the others back into the dark trees. Within minutes the forest swallowed them. The runes stopped sparking. The wall held over an empty tent. Luna stood in the sudden silence. She had let the proof walk away on four legs. But the parchment in her hand still named it real, witnessed and signed. She had lost the creature and kept the truth. Then she looked at the sealed record and saw the flaw. The image showed a young Snorkack alone. No one had recorded the herd. The world would ask where the rest were, and she had just sent them into the trees.