In The End ⁂ H. Potter Twin

Rumour Has It

As the next carriage pulled up, Iris turned toward it and suddenly found herself face to face with a large skeletal horse with pupil-less eyes and leathery wings. Her eyes went wide, her feet carrying her back a step in surprise.

Beside her, Harry asked, in a dumbfounded voice, "What is it?"

"What's what?" Ron said, looking confused at where Iris and Harry appeared to be staring.

"That. Pulling the carriage." Iris said, her gaze not moving from the creature.

Ron and Hermione shared a concerned look.

The bushy-haired girl spoke cautiously, "Nothing's pulling the carriage. It's pulling itself— like always."

Iris glanced at Harry, a frown pulling at her lips. She knew they weren't actually insane... so what exactly was this horse thing?

"Shall we get in, then?" said Ron uncertainly, looking at Harry and Iris as though worried about them.

"Yeah," said Harry. "Yeah, go on. . ."

"It's all right," said a dreamy voice from beside the twins as Ron vanished into the coach's dark interior. "You're not going mad or anything. I can see them too."

"Can you?" said Harry desperately, turning to Luna. Iris pulled her stare from the creatures to look at the girl. She could see the bat-winged horses reflected in her wide, silvery eyes.

"Oh yes," said Luna, "I've been able to see them ever since my first day here. They've always pulled the carriages. Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am."

Smiling faintly, she climbed into the musty interior of the carriage after Ron. That was only slightly reassuring as Iris knew for a fact that Luna had an abundance of creatures going throughout her brain that according to official sources, didn't exist.

Iris exchanged a grimace with Harry and then gave the winged-horses one final glance before forcing herself to look away.

In a matter of minutes, the students were once again entering the walls of Hogwarts. The entrance hall was ablaze with torches and echoing with footsteps as the students crossed the flagged stone floor for the double doors to the right, leading to the Great Hall and the start-of-term feast.

The four long House tables in the Great Hall were filling up under the starless black ceiling, which was just like the sky they could glimpse through the high windows. Candles floated in midair all along the tables, illuminating the silvery ghosts who were dotted about the Hall and the faces of the students talking eagerly to one another, exchanging summer news, shouting greetings at friends from other Houses, eyeing one another's new haircuts and robes. Again Iris noticed people putting their heads together to whisper as she and Harry passed; she avoided eye contact and tried to act as though she neither noticed nor cared.

Luna drifted away from them at the Ravenclaw table. The moment they reached Gryffindor's, Ginny was hailed by some fellow fourth years and left to sit with them; Iris, Harry, Ron, and Hermione found seats together about halfway down the table between Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor House ghost, and Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, the last two of whom gave Iris airy, overly friendly greetings that made her quite sure they had stopped talking about her a split second before. She dreaded having to share a dorm with them later that night. As Iris was looking over the students' heads to the staff table that ran along the top wall of the Hall, she noticed an unusual absence.

"Where's Hagrid?"

Harry, Ron, and Hermione scanned the staff table too, though there was no real need; Hagrid's size made him instantly obvious in any lineup.