er. She did not seem to need to blink as much as normal humans. She stared and stared at Harry, who had taken the seat opposite her and now wished he hadn't.

‘Had a good summer, Luna?’ Ginny asked.

‘Yes,’ said Luna dreamily, without taking her eyes off Harry. ‘Yes, it was quite enjoyable, you know. You're Harry Potter,’ she added.

‘Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure,’ said Luna in a singsong voice.

She raised her upside-down magazine high enough to hide her face and fell silent. Harry and Neville looked at each other with their eyebrows raised. Ginny suppressed a giggle.

The train rattled onwards, speeding them out into open country. It was an odd, unsettled sort of day; one moment the carriage was full of sunlight and the next they were passing beneath ominously grey clouds.

‘Guess what I got for my birthday?’ said Neville.

‘Another Remembrall?’ said Harry, remembering the marble-like device Neville's grandmother had sent him in an effort to improve his abysmal memory.

‘No,’ said Neville. ‘I could do with one, though, I lost the old one ages ago.... No, look at this....’

He dug the hand that was not keeping a firm grip on Trevor into his schoolbag and after a little bit of rummaging pulled out what appeared to be a small grey cactus in a pot, except that it was covered with what looked like boils rather than spines.

‘Mimbulus mimbletonia,’ he said proudly.

Harry stared at the thing. It was pulsating slightly, giving it the rather sinister look of some diseased internal organ.

‘It's really, really rare,’ said Neville, beaming. ‘I don't know if there's one in the greenhouse at Hogwarts, even. I can't wait to show it to Professor Sprout. My Great Uncle Algie got it for me in Assyria. I'm going to see if I can breed from it.’

Harry knew that Neville's favourite subject was Herbology, but for the life of him he could not see what he would want with this stunted little plant.

He dumped the toad into Harry's lap and took a quill from his schoolbag. Lu