Chapter 16: What the Light Said

The letter came by the evening post, and Draconia read it in the corridor outside the Boundary Gallery with her back to the wall.

Harry saw her do it from the stair.

She folded it small and put it inside her sleeve, and came in with her face quite smooth.

"Good evening, Peverell."

"Good evening."

They crossed the wands in the cradle, and the silver rose.

It rose pale and thin, and then it went blue.

It was not the soft blue of a cold room.

It was a hard, bright, narrow blue, running along the wood.

Harry had seen it once before, on the first night, in the second hour.

Her father's seal had been in her pocket then, and she had said there was nothing to mention.

He looked at the light.

He looked at her face, which showed nothing whatever.

"Cold's blue," he said, because it was the only thing he knew to say.

"The window is open."

"The window is shut," said Harry.

"Then the draught is coming from somewhere else."

He thought about every sharp thing she had ever said to him.

It was a long list, and he had kept it, in a careful and wounded order, since the first morning.

He had kept it as proof that she was a Malfia, and he was a Peverell.

The wards had put them in a room together out of spite.

He ran down the list now, slowly, with the light in front of him.

The legend, the window, the glasses.

The file, the quill, the latch.

The scarf.

Each one of them had been said flat, and each one had been said while the wand in her hand burned gold.

He had seen it and not read it.

He had taken the words for the thing, and the light for the weather.

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