Chapter 28 : Summon Manor
Summon Manor, Scottish Highlands — December 20, 1991, 4:12 PM
Cork's tears hit the marble floor in a steady rhythm, each drop accompanied by a fresh wave of emotion that seemed to physically expand the house-elf's body before collapsing it back to its usual size.
"Young Master is HOME! And Young Master is bringing FRIENDS! Cork is — Cork is —" The elf's voice cracked. He turned to Harry, who was still standing in the fireplace alcove with ash on his glasses and wonder on his face. "And THIS must be Harry Potter! Cork has heard SO MUCH! Cork has prepared the blue room with extra blankets because Young Master said Harry Potter gets cold and —"
"Cork." Matt's voice was gentle. "Breathe."
Cork breathed. It didn't help. His enormous eyes welled again and he seized Harry's trunk with the manic efficiency of a creature who expressed love through service. "Pip! TILLY! They is HERE!"
Two more cracks. Pip appeared at the foot of the grand staircase — the elder elf, grey-eared, dignified, wearing a clean tea towel pressed into something resembling a butler's uniform. He bowed. "Welcome home, Young Master. And welcome to the guests of House Summon."
Tilly materialised beside the kitchen corridor, floury to the elbows, carrying the unmistakable scent of roasting meat and something sweet with cinnamon. "Dinner in forty minutes. Young Master's guests should wash hands. Tilly does not serve unwashed hands."
Hermione was staring. Not at the elves — she'd read about house-elves, Matt was certain she had opinions about them — but at the entrance hall itself. The Manor's grand foyer was four centuries of architectural ambition rendered in Scottish granite and dark wood: vaulted ceiling, floating candles arranged in constellation patterns, portraits lining the walls in gilt frames. A Christmas tree towered in the centre — twelve feet, decorated with enchanted ornaments that shifted colour and shape, live fairies blinking from the branches with the resigned air of creatures who'd been hired for the season and intended to negotiate better rates next year.
"This is your house," Hermione said.
"Family estate." Matt set down his trunk. "Built 1583. Expanded in 1742 when the creature reserve was added. Seventeen bedrooms, two libraries, a potions laboratory, and three bathrooms that don't always agree on water temperature."
"Two libraries?"
"One general, one creatures-only. The creature library has texts that Hogwarts doesn't."
Hermione's expression underwent a transformation that Matt could only describe as religious. Her eyes went distant, her breathing changed, and her fingers twitched with the particular hunger of someone who'd been told there were books she hadn't read and the distance between her and those books was decreasing.
"Can I —"
"After dinner. Tilly has rules about unwashed hands and empty stomachs."
Harry hadn't moved. He stood in the fireplace alcove, ash settling on his Weasley jumper, and looked at the entrance hall with an expression Matt recognised because he'd worn it himself — the first night, age six, when he'd opened his eyes in a four-poster bed and found himself in a world that shouldn't exist. Harry's expression wasn't wonder. It was disbelief. The particular kind that belonged to someone who'd spent ten years in a cupboard and was now standing in a hall with floating candles and portraits that smiled at him.
"Harry."
Green eyes blinked behind crooked glasses. "Yeah. Sorry. I just —" His hand found the spot on his chest where the lucky coin lay under his shirt. The gesture was so habitual now that Matt doubted Harry was conscious of it. "Is this real?"
"It's real."
"It's warm."
The word carried weight that had nothing to do with temperature. Harry had spent a decade in a house that was cold in every way that mattered — physically, emotionally, architecturally — and Summon Manor was warm the way a hearth was warm, the way Cork's tears were warm, the way the portraits on the walls looked down with curious, welcoming expressions because the house hadn't had guests in years and was delighted.
"Come on," Matt said. "I'll show you around."
---
The tour took an hour. Matt led them through the Manor the way Hagrid had led first-years across the lake — with pride, with knowledge, with the barely contained enthusiasm of someone sharing a place they loved.
The main library came first. Two storeys of shelved walls, a spiral staircase connecting the levels, reading chairs positioned beneath tall windows that showed the Highland mountains in pale winter light. The ceiling was painted with a map of magical Britain, the locations of every known creature habitat marked with glowing pins that pulsed faintly.
Hermione made a sound that Matt would later describe to Ron as "what happens when you show a Kneazle an entire room full of mice." She ran her fingers along the spines, reading titles in a whisper, pulling volumes halfway out and pushing them back, the child in a sweet shop for whom choosing was agony because choosing meant not-choosing.
"Later," Matt said, steering her out. "I promise."
The creature library was smaller — a single room off the eastern corridor, locked with a ward that responded to Summon blood. Matt pressed his palm to the door and it swung open. Inside: floor-to-ceiling shelves of journals, field guides, anatomical diagrams, breeding records, and hand-written correspondence between generations of Summon creature healers. The air smelled of old ink and preservation charms.
"This is where my grandmother kept her records," Matt said. "Field observations going back to the 1800s. Every creature the family ever studied, bonded, or healed."
Hermione didn't speak. She stood in the doorway and breathed the room in, and her expression was no longer hunger. It was reverence.
The grounds came next — out the back door, through the herb garden (dormant under frost, but labelled stakes showed what would bloom in spring), past the paddock fencing, and into the creature reserve.
It stretched for acres. Enclosures — empty, maintained by house-elf magic — spread across the Highland hillside in a patchwork of habitats: a wooded section with raised platforms for arboreal species, a lake enclosure fed by a natural stream, open meadows fenced for grazing creatures, and a rocky outcrop that had been shaped into burrows for underground dwellers. All empty. All waiting.
"My family kept dozens of species here," Matt said. "Bowtruckles, Kneazles, Hippogriffs, a breeding pair of Thestrals. When the family was murdered, the creatures were relocated — some to Hogwarts, some to reserves abroad. The habitats stayed. The house-elves maintain them."
Harry walked the fenced perimeter, touching the wooden posts, looking into the empty meadow with an expression Matt couldn't quite parse. Wistfulness, maybe. The recognition of something that had been lost.
"You're going to fill it again," Harry said. Not a question.
"Every enclosure. Every habitat. It might take years, but yes."
A silver shape emerged from the garden gate. Luna — transported from Hagrid's paddock by Floo two days ago, settling into the reserve's meadow enclosure with the particular grace of a creature returning to the kind of space she'd been born for. She crossed the grass on long legs, her oversized hooves leaving spiral patterns in the frost, and pressed her muzzle against the fence.
"This is Luna," Matt said.
Harry extended his hand. Luna sniffed it — once, twice — then lowered her head and let him scratch between her enormous blue eyes. The Mooncalf's trust was immediate and absolute, the response of a creature who'd been healed by Matt's hands and now extended that trust to Matt's pack.
Harry laughed. The sound was quiet, surprised, the kind of laugh that comes when something small and gentle happens after a lifetime of nothing small or gentle.
"She likes you," Matt said.
"Animals always do." Harry scratched harder. Luna's eyes half-closed. "The Dursleys' neighbour had a dog. It was the only thing on Privet Drive that was nice to me."
The admission cost him. Matt could see it in the way Harry's jaw tightened after the words came out — the reflexive shame of having said something vulnerable, the expectation of mockery or dismissal that a decade of Dursleys had wired into him.
"Then you understand," Matt said. "Animals know."
---
Family Gallery — 5:30 PM
The portraits lined a corridor on the second floor. Generations of Summons looked down from gilt frames — men and women in robes of various centuries, most accompanied by creatures. A witch with a Phoenix on her shoulder. A wizard with a full-grown Graphorn at his feet. A stern-faced matriarch flanked by twin Hippogriffs.
Matt stopped at the last portrait.
Cordelia Summon. Dark hair threaded with silver, sharp eyes, a Bowtruckle visible on her shoulder that looked strikingly like Twig. She'd been painted in the creature library, books piled around her, quill in hand. The portrait smiled when Matt approached.
"Grandmother," Matt said. "These are my friends. Harry Potter. Hermione Granger."
The portrait studied them. Portraits had limited consciousness — echoes of their subjects, not the subjects themselves — but Cordelia's echo was perceptive. Her painted eyes moved from Harry to Hermione and back.
"Potter," the portrait said. "Lily Evans' son?"
"You knew my mum?" Harry's voice cracked.
"She had a gift with creatures. Not formal training — instinct. She once brought me a injured Niffler she'd found in Hogsmeade." A painted smile. "She had your eyes."
Harry's hand found the wall. Steadied himself. Matt watched and said nothing, because some moments belonged to the people in them and the best thing a friend could do was be present and quiet.
"He killed my family," Matt said, after a pause long enough for Harry to collect himself. "Voldemort. He came here. Killed my parents, my uncle, my aunt. Grandmother died defending the reserve." His voice was steady — he'd practised this, the sanitised version, the one that was true without being the whole truth. "That's why the enclosures are empty. That's why I'm the last one."
Harry looked at him. The expression was complicated — grief and recognition and the particular bond of people who'd been destroyed by the same force and rebuilt themselves from whatever was left.
"We're not just friends," Matt said. "We're survivors. That means something."
Hermione stood behind them, quiet, her hand pressed against her mouth. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. The three of them stood in the portrait corridor while painted Summons watched from their frames, and the silence had the weight of something being forged.
Tilly appeared at the corridor's end.
"Dinner," she said, and her voice was softer than usual. "Young Master's guests should eat. Tilly has made too much food. As always."
They ate. Roast lamb, roasted vegetables, fresh bread that Cork had baked himself, trifle for pudding. Harry had three helpings. Hermione drank four cups of hot chocolate with actual melted chocolate that made her eyes close in the particular rapture of someone who'd just discovered that everything she'd ever tasted before was a rehearsal.
Cork served and wept and served some more and wept some more. Pip stood by the door in his pressed tea towel, dignified and watchful, the elder elf who'd served three generations and was watching the fourth bring friends home for the first time.
After dinner, Hermione disappeared into the library. Matt heard her through the door — a gasp, then silence, then the rapid sound of pages turning. She'd be lost for hours.
Harry stood at his guest room window. The Highlands stretched dark and vast under a sky dense with stars — the kind of sky that cities had killed, the kind that Matt remembered from his old life only in photographs.
"I never want to leave," Harry whispered.
Matt stood in the doorway. Twig shifted in his hair, sleepy, warm.
"You don't have to. Not really. This is home now. For both of us."
Harry didn't answer. But his hand found the lucky coin, and he pressed it against his chest, and the tiny ward hummed.
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