[Part 12] "Harry Potter and Order of Phoenix" by Rowling J.K.

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CHAPTER XXIII. CHRISTMAS ON THE CLOSED WARD

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Was this why Dumbledore would no longer meet Harry’s eyes?

Did he expect to see Voldemort staring out of them, afraid, perhaps, that their vivid green might turn suddenly to scarlet, with catlike slits for pupils?

Harry remembered how the snakelike face of Voldemort had once forced itself out of the back of Professor Quirrell’s head, and he ran his hand over the back of his own, wondering what it would feel like if Voldemort burst out of his skull. . . .

He felt dirty, contaminated, as though he were carrying some deadly germ, unworthy to sit on the underground train back from the hospital with innocent, clean people whose minds and bodies were free of the taint of Voldemort. . . .

He had not merely seen the snake, he had been the snake, he knew it now. . . .

And then a truly terrible thought occurred to him, a memory bobbing to the surface of his mind, one that made his insides writhe and squirm like serpents. . . .

“What’s he after apart from followers?”

“Stuff he can only get by stealth . . . like a weapon. Something he didn’t have last time.”

I’m the weapon, Harry thought, and it was as though poison were pumping through his veins, chilling him, bringing him out in a sweat as he swayed with the train through the dark tunnel.

I’m the one Voldemort’s trying to use, that’s why they’ve got guards around me everywhere I go, it’s not for my protection, it’s for other people’s, only it’s not working, they can’t have someone on me all the time at Hogwarts. . . .

I did attack Mr. Weasley last night, it was me, Voldemort made me do it and he could be inside me, listening to my thoughts right now. . . .

“Are you all right, Harry, dear?” whispered Mrs. Weasley, leaning across Ginny to speak to him as the train rattled along through its dark tunnel.

“You don’t look very well. Are you feeling sick?”

They were all watching him.

He shook his head violently and stared up at an advertisement for home insurance.

“Harry, dear, are you sure you’re all right?” said Mrs. Weasley in a worried voice, as they walked around the unkempt patch of grass in the middle of Grimmauld Place.

“You look ever so pale. . . . Are you sure you slept this morning? You go upstairs to bed right now, and you can have a couple of hours’ sleep before dinner, all right?”

He nodded; here was a ready-made excuse not to talk to any of the others, which was precisely what he wanted, so when she opened the front door he proceeded straight past the troll’s leg umbrella stand and up the stairs and hurried into his and Ron’s bedroom.

Here he began to pace up and down, past the two beds and Phineas Nigellus’s empty portrait, his brain teeming and seething with questions and ever more dreadful ideas. . . .

How had he become a snake?

Perhaps he was an Animagus. . . .

No, he couldn’t be, he would know. . . .

Perhaps Voldemort was an Animagus. . . .

Yes, thought Harry, that would fit, he would turn into a snake of course . . . and when he’s possessing me, then we both transform. . . .

That still doesn’t explain how come I got to London and back to my bed in the space of about five minutes, though. . . .

But then Voldemort’s about the most powerful wizard in the world, apart from Dumbledore, it’s probably no problem at all to him to transport people like that. . . .

And then, with a terrible stab of panic he thought, but this is insane — if Voldemort’s possessing me, I’m giving him a clear view into the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix right now!

He’ll know who’s in the Order and where Sirius is . . . and I’ve heard loads of stuff I shouldn’t have, everything Sirius told me the first night I was here. . . .

There was only one thing for it: He would have to leave Grimmauld Place straightaway.

He would spend Christmas at Hogwarts without the others, which would keep them safe over the holidays at least. . . .

But no, that wouldn’t do, there were still plenty of people at Hogwarts to maim and injure, what if it was Seamus, Dean, or Neville next time?

He stopped his pacing and stood staring at Phineas Nigellus’s empty frame.

A leaden sensation was settling in the pit of his stomach.

He had no alternative: He was going to have to return to Privet Drive, cut himself off from other wizards entirely. . . .

Well, if he had to do it, he thought, there was no point hanging around.

Trying with all his might not to think how the Dursleys were going to react when they found him on their doorstep six months earlier than they had expected, he strode over to his trunk, slammed the lid shut and locked it, then glanced around automatically for Hedwig before remembering that she was still at Hogwarts — well, her cage would be one less thing to carry —

He seized one end of his trunk and had dragged it halfway toward the door when a sneaky voice said, “Running away, are we?”

He looked around.

Phineas Nigellus had appeared upon the canvas of his portrait and was leaning against the frame, watching Harry with an amused expression on his face.

“Not running away, no,” said Harry shortly, dragging his trunk a few more feet across the room.

“I thought,” said Phineas Nigellus, stroking his pointed beard, “that to belong in Gryffindor House you were supposed to be brave?

It looks to me as though you would have been better off in my own House.

We Slytherins are brave, yes, but not stupid.

For instance, given the choice, we will always choose to save our own necks.”

“It’s not my own neck I’m saving,” said Harry tersely, tugging the trunk over a patch of particularly uneven, moth-eaten carpet right in front of the door.

“Oh I see,” said Phineas Nigellus, still stroking his beard.

“This is no cowardly flight — you are being noble.”

Harry ignored him.

His hand was on the doorknob when Phineas Nigellus said lazily, “I have a message for you from Albus Dumbledore.”

Harry spun around.

“What is it?”

“Stay where you are.”

“I haven’t moved!” said Harry, his hand still upon the doorknob.

“So what’s the message?”

“I have just given it to you, dolt,” said Phineas Nigellus smoothly.

“Dumbledore says, ‘Stay where you are.’”

“Why?” said Harry eagerly, dropping the end of his trunk.

“Why does he want me to stay?

What else did he say?”

“Nothing whatsoever,” said Phineas Nigellus, raising a thin black eyebrow as though he found Harry impertinent.

Harry’s temper rose to the surface like a snake rearing from long grass.

He was exhausted, he was confused beyond measure, he had experienced terror, relief, and then terror again in the last twelve hours, and still Dumbledore did not want to talk to him!

“So that’s it, is it?” he said loudly.

“Stay there?

That’s all anyone could tell me after I got attacked by those dementors too!

Just stay put while the grownups sort it out, Harry!

We won’t bother telling you anything, though, because your tiny little brain might not be able to cope with it!”

“You know,” said Phineas Nigellus, even more loudly than Harry, “this is precisely why I loathed being a teacher!

Young people are so infernally convinced that they are absolutely right about everything.

Has it not occurred to you, my poor puffed-up popinjay, that there might be an excellent reason why the headmaster of Hogwarts is not confiding every tiny detail of his plans to you?

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Have you never paused, while feeling hard-done-by, to note that following Dumbledore’s orders has never yet led you into harm?

No.

No, like all young people, you are quite sure that you alone feel and think, you alone recognize danger, you alone are the only one clever enough to realize what the Dark Lord may be planning . . .”

“He is planning something to do with me, then?” said Harry swiftly.

“Did I say that?” said Phineas Nigellus, idly examining his silk gloves.

“Now, if you will excuse me, I have better things to do than to listen to adolescent agonizing. . . .

Good day to you . . .”

And he strolled into his frame and out of sight.

“Fine, go then!” Harry bellowed at the empty frame.

“And tell Dumbledore thanks for nothing!”

The empty canvas remained silent.

Fuming, Harry dragged his trunk back to the foot of his bed, then threw himself facedown upon the moth-eaten covers, his eyes shut, his body heavy and aching. . . .

He felt he had journeyed miles and miles. . . .

It seemed impossible that less than twenty-four hours ago Cho Chang had been approaching him under the mistletoe. . . .

He was so tired. . . .

He was scared to sleep . . . yet he did not know how long he could fight it. . . .

Dumbledore had told him to stay. . . .

That must mean he was allowed to sleep. . . .

But he was scared. . . .

What if it happened again . . . ?

He was sinking into shadows. . . .

It was as though a film in his head had been waiting to start.

He was walking down a deserted corridor toward a plain black door, past rough stone walls, torches, and an open doorway onto a flight of stone steps leading downstairs on the left. . . .

He reached the black door but could not open it. . . .

He stood gazing at it, desperate for entry. . . .

Something he wanted with all his heart lay beyond. . . .

A prize beyond his dreams. . . .

If only his scar would stop prickling . . . then he would be able to think more clearly . . .

“Harry,” said Ron’s voice, from far, far away, “Mum says dinner’s ready, but she’ll save you something if you want to stay in bed . . .”

Harry opened his eyes, but Ron had already left the room.

He doesn’t want to be on his own with me, Harry thought. Not after what he heard Moody say . . .

He supposed none of them would want him there anymore now that they knew what was inside him. . . .

He would not go down to dinner; he would not inflict his company upon them.

He turned over onto his other side and after a while dropped back off to sleep, waking much later in the early hours of the morning, with his insides aching with hunger, and Ron snoring in the next bed.

Squinting around the room, he saw the dark outline of Phineas Nigellus standing again in his portrait, and it occurred to Harry that Dumbledore had probably set Phineas Nigellus to watch over him, in case he attacked somebody else.

The feeling of being unclean intensified.

He half wished he had not obeyed Dumbledore and stayed. . . .

If this was how life was going to be in Grimmauld Place from now on, maybe he would be better off in Privet Drive after all.

Everybody else spent the following morning putting up Christmas decorations.

Harry could not remember Sirius ever being in such a good mood; he was actually singing carols, apparently delighted that he was to have company over Christmas.

Harry could hear his voice echoing up through the floor in the cold and empty drawing room where he was sitting alone, watching the sky outside the windows growing whiter, threatening snow, all the time feeling a savage pleasure that he was giving the others the opportunity to keep talking about him, as they were bound to be doing.

When he heard Mrs. Weasley calling his name softly up the stairs around lunchtime, he retreated farther upstairs and ignored her.

It was around six o’clock in the evening that the doorbell rang and Mrs. Black started screaming again.

Assuming that Mundungus or some other Order member had come to call, Harry merely settled himself more comfortably against the wall of Buckbeak the hippogriff’s room where he was hiding, trying to ignore how hungry he felt as he fed Buckbeak dead rats.

It came as a slight shock when somebody hammered hard on the door a few minutes later.

“I know you’re in there,” said Hermione’s voice. “Will you please come out? I want to talk to you.”

“What are you doing here?” Harry asked her, pulling open the door, as Buckbeak resumed his scratching at the straw-strewn floor for any fragments of rat he might have dropped.

“I thought you were skiing with your mum and dad.”

“Well, to tell the truth, skiing’s not really my thing,” said Hermione. “So I’ve come for Christmas.”

There was snow in her hair and her face was pink with cold.

“But don’t tell Ron that, I told him it’s really good because he kept laughing so much.

Anyway, Mum and Dad are a bit disappointed, but I’ve told them that everyone who’s serious about the exams is staying at Hogwarts to study.

They want me to do well, they’ll understand.

Anyway,” she said briskly, “let’s go to your bedroom, Ron’s mum’s lit a fire in there and she’s sent up sandwiches.”

Harry followed her back to the second floor.

When he entered the bedroom, he was rather surprised to see both Ron and Ginny waiting for them, sitting on Ron’s bed.

“I came on the Knight Bus,” said Hermione airily, pulling off her jacket before Harry had time to speak.

“Dumbledore told me what had happened first thing yesterday morning, but I had to wait for term to end officially before setting off.

Umbridge is already livid that you lot disappeared right under her nose, even though Dumbledore told her Mr. Weasley was in St. Mungo’s, and he’d given you all permission to visit.

So . . .”

She sat down next to Ginny, and the two girls and Ron looked up at Harry.

“How’re you feeling?” asked Hermione.

“Fine,” said Harry stiffly.

“Oh, don’t lie, Harry,” she said impatiently. “Ron and Ginny say you’ve been hiding from everyone since you got back from St. Mungo’s.”

“They do, do they?” said Harry, glaring at Ron and Ginny.

Ron looked down at his feet but Ginny seemed quite unabashed.

“Well, you have!” she said. “And you won’t look at any of us!”

“It’s you lot who won’t look at me!” said Harry angrily.

“Maybe you’re taking it in turns to look and keep missing each other,” suggested Hermione, the corners of her mouth twitching.

“Very funny,” snapped Harry, turning away.

“Oh, stop feeling all misunderstood,” said Hermione sharply. “Look, the others have told me what you overheard last night on the Extendable Ears —”

“Yeah?” growled Harry, his hands deep in his pockets as he watched the snow now falling thickly outside. “All been talking about me, have you? Well, I’m getting used to it . . .”

“We wanted to talk to you, Harry,” said Ginny, “but as you’ve been hiding ever since we got back —”

“I didn’t want anyone to talk to me,” said Harry, who was feeling more and more nettled.

“Well, that was a bit stupid of you,” said Ginny angrily, “seeing as you don’t know anyone but me who’s been possessed by You-Know-Who, and I can tell you how it feels.”

Harry remained quite still as the impact of these words hit him.

Then he turned on the spot to face her.

“I forgot,” he said.

“Lucky you,” said Ginny coolly.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and he meant it.

“So . . . so do you think I’m being possessed, then?”

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“Well, can you remember everything you’ve been doing?” Ginny asked.

“Are there big blank periods where you don’t know what you’ve been up to?”

Harry racked his brains.

“No,” he said.

“Then You-Know-Who hasn’t ever possessed you,” said Ginny simply.

“When he did it to me, I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing for hours at a time. I’d find myself somewhere and not know how I got there.”

Harry hardly dared believe her, yet his heart was lightening almost in spite of himself.

“That dream I had about your dad and the snake, though —”

“Harry, you’ve had these dreams before,” Hermione said.

“You had flashes of what Voldemort was up to last year.”

“This was different,” said Harry, shaking his head. “I was inside that snake. It was like I was the snake. . . . What if Voldemort somehow transported me to London — ?”

“One day,” said Hermione, sounding thoroughly exasperated, “you’ll read Hogwarts: A History, and perhaps that will remind you that you can’t Apparate or Disapparate inside Hogwarts.

Even Voldemort couldn’t just make you fly out of your dormitory, Harry.”

“You didn’t leave your bed, mate,” said Ron.

“I saw you thrashing around in your sleep about a minute before we could wake you up . . .”

Harry started pacing up and down the room again, thinking.

What they were all saying was not only comforting, it made sense . . .

Without really thinking, he took a sandwich from the plate on the bed and crammed it hungrily into his mouth. . . .

I’m not the weapon after all, thought Harry.

His heart swelled with happiness and relief, and he felt like joining in as they heard Sirius tramping past their door toward Buckbeak’s room, singing “God Rest Ye Merry, Hippogriffs” at the top of his voice.

How could he have dreamed of returning to Privet Drive for Christmas?

Sirius’s delight at having the house full again, and especially at having Harry back, was infectious.

He was no longer their sullen host of the summer; now he seemed determined that everyone should enjoy themselves as much, if not more, than they would have done at Hogwarts.

He worked tirelessly in the run-up to Christmas Day, cleaning and decorating with their help, so that by the time they all went to bed on Christmas Eve the house was barely recognizable.

The tarnished chandeliers were no longer hung with cobwebs but with garlands of holly and gold and silver streamers.

Magical snow glittered in heaps over the threadbare carpets.

A great Christmas tree, obtained by Mundungus and decorated with live fairies, blocked Sirius’s family tree from view.

Even the stuffed elf heads on the hall wall wore Father Christmas hats and beards.

Harry awoke on Christmas morning to find a stack of presents at the foot of his bed and Ron already halfway through opening his own, rather larger, pile.

“Good haul this year,” he informed Harry through a cloud of paper.

“Thanks for the Broom Compass, it’s excellent, beats Hermione’s — she’s got me a homework planner —”

Harry sorted through his presents and found one with Hermione’s handwriting on it.

She had given him too a book that resembled a diary, except that it said things like “Do it today or later you’ll pay!” every time he opened a page.

Sirius and Lupin had given Harry a set of excellent books entitled Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts, which had superb, moving color illustrations of all the counterjinxes and hexes it described.

Harry flicked through the first volume eagerly; he could see it was going to be highly useful in his plans for the D.A.

Hagrid had sent a furry brown wallet that had fangs, which were presumably supposed to be an antitheft device, but unfortunately prevented Harry from putting any money in without getting his fingers ripped off.

Tonks’s present was a small, working model of a Firebolt, which Harry watched fly around the room, wishing he still had his full-size version.

Ron had given him an enormous box of Every-Flavor Beans.

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley sent the usual hand-knitted jumper and some mince pies.

Dobby sent a truly dreadful painting that Harry suspected had been done by the elf himself.

He had just turned it upside down to see whether it looked better that way when, with a loud crack, Fred and George Apparated at the foot of his bed.

“Merry Christmas,” said George.

“Don’t go downstairs for a bit.”

“Why not?” said Ron.

“Mum’s crying again,” said Fred heavily.

“Percy sent back his Christmas jumper.”

“Without a note,” added George.

“Hasn’t asked how Dad is or visited him or anything . . .”

“We tried to comfort her,” said Fred, moving around the bed to look at Harry’s portrait.

“Told her Percy’s nothing more than a humongous pile of rat droppings —”

“— didn’t work,” said George, helping himself to a Chocolate Frog.

“So Lupin took over. Best let him cheer her up before we go down for breakfast, I reckon.”

“What’s that supposed to be anyway?” asked Fred, squinting at Dobby’s painting.

“Looks like a gibbon with two black eyes.”

“It’s Harry!” said George, pointing at the back of the picture.

“Says so on the back!”

“Good likeness,” said Fred, grinning.

Harry threw his new homework diary at him; it hit the wall opposite and fell to the floor where it said happily, “If you’ve dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s then you may do whatever you please!”

They got up and dressed; they could hear various inhabitants of the house calling “Merry Christmas” to each other.

On their way downstairs they met Hermione.

“Thanks for the book, Harry!” she said happily.

“I’ve been wanting that New Theory of Numerology for ages!

And that perfume is really unusual, Ron.”

“No problem,” said Ron.

“Who’s that for anyway?” he added, nodding at the neatly wrapped present she was carrying.

“Kreacher,” said Hermione brightly.

“It had better not be clothes!” said Ron warningly.

“You know what Sirius said, Kreacher knows too much, we can’t set him free!”

“It isn’t clothes,” said Hermione.

“Although if I had my way I’d certainly give him something to wear other than that filthy old rag.

No, it’s a patchwork quilt, I thought it would brighten up his bedroom.”

“What bedroom?” said Harry, dropping his voice to a whisper as they were passing the portrait of Sirius’s mother.

“Well, Sirius says it’s not so much a bedroom, more a kind of — den,” said Hermione.

“Apparently he sleeps under the boiler in that cupboard off the kitchen.”

Mrs. Weasley was the only person in the basement when they arrived there.

She was standing at the stove and sounded as though she had a bad head cold when she wished them Merry Christmas, and they all averted their eyes.

“So, this is Kreacher’s bedroom?” said Ron, strolling over to a dingy door in the corner opposite the pantry which Harry had never seen open.

“Yes,” said Hermione, now sounding a little nervous.

“Er . . . I think we’d better knock . . .”

Ron rapped the door with his knuckles but there was no reply.

“He must be sneaking around upstairs,” he said, and without further ado pulled open the door.

“Urgh.”

Harry peered inside.

Most of the cupboard was taken up with a very large and old-fashioned boiler, but in the foot’s space underneath the pipes Kreacher had made himself something that looked like a nest.

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A jumble of assorted rags and smelly old blankets were piled on the floor and the small dent in the middle of it showed where Kreacher curled up to sleep every night.

Here and there among the material were stale bread crusts and moldy old bits of cheese.

In a far corner glinted small objects and coins that Harry guessed Kreacher had saved, magpielike, from Sirius’s purge of the house, and he had also managed to retrieve the silver-framed family photographs that Sirius had thrown away over the summer.

Their glass might be shattered, but still the little black-and-white people inside them peered haughtily up at him, including — he felt a little jolt in his stomach — the dark, heavy-lidded woman whose trial he had witnessed in Dumbledore’s Pensieve: Bellatrix Lestrange.

By the looks of it, hers was Kreacher’s favorite photograph; he had placed it to the fore of all the others and had mended the glass clumsily with Spellotape.

“I think I’ll just leave his present here,” said Hermione, laying the package neatly in the middle of the depression in the rags and blankets and closing the door quietly.

“He’ll find it later, that’ll be fine . . .”

“Come to think of it,” said Sirius, emerging from the pantry carrying a large turkey as they closed the cupboard door, “has anyone actually seen Kreacher lately?”

“I haven’t seen him since the night we came back here,” said Harry.

“You were ordering him out of the kitchen.”

“Yeah . . .” said Sirius, frowning.

“You know, I think that’s the last time I saw him, too. . . .

He must be hiding upstairs somewhere . . .”

“He couldn’t have left, could he?” said Harry.

“I mean, when you said ‘out,’ maybe he thought you meant, get out of the house?”

“No, no, house-elves can’t leave unless they’re given clothes, they’re tied to their family’s house,” said Sirius.

“They can leave the house if they really want to,” Harry contradicted him.

“Dobby did, he left the Malfoys’ to give me warnings three years ago.

He had to punish himself afterward, but he still managed it.”

Sirius looked slightly disconcerted for a moment, then said, “I’ll look for him later, I expect I’ll find him upstairs crying his eyes out over my mother’s old bloomers or something.

Of course, he might have crawled into the airing cupboard and died.

But I mustn’t get my hopes up . . .”

Fred, George, and Ron laughed; Hermione, however, looked reproachful.

Once they had had their Christmas lunch, the Weasleys and Harry and Hermione were planning to pay Mr. Weasley another visit, escorted by Mad-Eye and Lupin.

Mundungus turned up in time for Christmas pudding and trifle, having managed to “borrow” a car for the occasion, as the Underground did not run on Christmas Day.

The car, which Harry doubted very much had been taken with the knowledge or consent of its owner, had had a similar Enlarging Spell put upon it as the Weasleys’ old Ford Anglia; although normally proportioned outside, ten people with Mundungus driving were able to fit into it quite comfortably.

Mrs. Weasley hesitated at the point of getting inside; Harry knew that her disapproval of Mundungus was battling with her dislike of traveling without magic; finally the cold outside and her children’s pleading triumphed, and she settled herself into the backseat between Fred and Bill with good grace.

The journey to St. Mungo’s was quite quick, as there was very little traffic on the roads.

A small trickle of witches and wizards were creeping furtively up the otherwise deserted street to visit the hospital.

Harry and the others got out of the car, and Mundungus drove off around the corner to wait for them; they strolled casually toward the window where the dummy in green nylon stood, then, one by one, stepped through the glass.

The reception area looked pleasantly festive:

The crystal orbs that illuminated St. Mungo’s had been turned to red and gold so that they became gigantic, glowing Christmas baubles; holly hung around every doorway, and shining white Christmas trees covered in magical snow and icicles glittered in every corner, each topped with a gleaming gold star.

It was less crowded than the last time they had been there, although halfway across the room Harry found himself shunted aside by a witch with a walnut jammed up her left nostril.

“Family argument, eh?” smirked the blonde witch behind the desk.

“You’re the third I’ve seen today . . . Spell Damage, fourth floor . . .”

They found Mr. Weasley propped up in bed with the remains of his turkey dinner on a tray in his lap and a rather sheepish expression on his face.

“Everything all right, Arthur?” asked Mrs. Weasley, after they had all greeted Mr. Weasley and handed over their presents.

“Fine, fine,” said Mr. Weasley, a little too heartily.

“You — er — haven’t seen Healer Smethwyck, have you?”

“No,” said Mrs. Weasley suspiciously, “why?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Mr. Weasley airily, starting to unwrap his pile of gifts.

“Well, everyone had a good day?

What did you all get for Christmas?

Oh, Harry — this is absolutely wonderful —”

For he had just opened Harry’s gift of fuse-wire and screwdrivers.

Mrs. Weasley did not seem entirely satisfied with Mr. Weasley’s answer.

As her husband leaned over to shake Harry’s hand, she peered at the bandaging under his nightshirt.

“Arthur,” she said, with a snap in her voice like a mousetrap, “you’ve had your bandages changed.

Why have you had your bandages changed a day early, Arthur?

They told me they wouldn’t need doing until tomorrow.”

“What?” said Mr. Weasley, looking rather frightened and pulling the bed covers higher up his chest.

“No, no — it’s nothing — it’s — I —”

He seemed to deflate under Mrs. Weasley’s piercing gaze.

“Well — now don’t get upset, Molly, but Augustus Pye had an idea.

He’s the Trainee Healer, you know, lovely young chap and very interested in . . . um . . . complementary medicine.

I mean, some of these old Muggle remedies . . . well, they’re called stitches, Molly, and they work very well on — on Muggle wounds —”

Mrs. Weasley let out an ominous noise somewhere between a shriek and a snarl.

Lupin strolled away from the bed and over to the werewolf, who had no visitors and was looking rather wistfully at the crowd around Mr. Weasley.

Bill muttered something about getting himself a cup of tea and Fred and George leapt up to accompany him, grinning.

“Do you mean to tell me,” said Mrs. Weasley, her voice growing louder with every word and apparently unaware that her fellow visitors were scurrying for cover, “that you have been messing about with Muggle remedies?”

“Not messing about, Molly, dear,” said Mr. Weasley imploringly.

“It was just — just something Pye and I thought we’d try — only, most unfortunately — well, with these particular kinds of wounds — it doesn’t seem to work as well as we’d hoped —”

“Meaning?”

“Well . . . well, I don’t know whether you know what — what stitches are?”

“It sounds as though you’ve been trying to sew your skin back together,” said Mrs. Weasley with a snort of mirthless laughter, “but even you, Arthur, wouldn’t be that stupid —”

“I fancy a cup of tea too,” said Harry, jumping to his feet.

Hermione, Ron, and Ginny almost sprinted to the door with him.

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As it swung closed behind them, they heard Mrs. Weasley shriek, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THAT’S THE GENERAL IDEA?”

“Typical Dad,” said Ginny, shaking her head as they set off up the corridor.

“Stitches . . . I ask you . . .”

“Well, you know, they do work well on non-magical wounds,” said Hermione fairly.

“I suppose something in that snake’s venom dissolves them or something. . . . I wonder where the tearoom is?”

“Fifth floor,” said Harry, remembering the sign over the Welcome Witch’s desk.

They walked along the corridor through a set of double doors and found a rickety staircase lined with more portraits of brutal-looking Healers.

As they climbed it, the various Healers called out to them, diagnosing odd complaints and suggesting horrible remedies.

Ron was seriously affronted when a medieval wizard called out that he clearly had a bad case of spattergroit.

“And what’s that supposed to be?” he asked angrily, as the Healer pursued him through six more portraits, shoving the occupants out of the way.

“’Tis a most grievous affliction of the skin, young master, that will leave you pockmarked and more gruesome even than you are now —”

“Watch who you’re calling gruesome!” said Ron, his ears turning red.

“The only remedy is to take the liver of a toad, bind it tight about your throat, stand naked by the full moon in a barrel of eels’ eyes —”

“I have not got spattergroit!”

“But the unsightly blemishes upon your visage, young master —”

“They’re freckles!” said Ron furiously.

“Now get back in your own picture and leave me alone!”

He rounded on the others, who were all keeping determinedly straight faces.

“What floor’s this?”

“I think it’s the fifth,” said Hermione.

“Nah, it’s the fourth,” said Harry, “one more —”

But as he stepped onto the landing he came to an abrupt halt, staring at the small window set into the double doors that marked the start of a corridor signposted SPELL DAMAGE.

A man was peering out at them all with his nose pressed against the glass.

He had wavy blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a broad vacant smile that revealed dazzlingly white teeth.

“Blimey!” said Ron, also staring at the man.

“Oh my goodness,” said Hermione suddenly, sounding breathless.

“Professor Lockhart!”

Their ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher pushed open the doors and moved toward them, wearing a long lilac dressing gown.

“Well, hello there!” he said.

“I expect you’d like my autograph, would you?”

“Hasn’t changed much, has he?” Harry muttered to Ginny, who grinned.

“Er — how are you, Professor?” said Ron, sounding slightly guilty.

It had been Ron’s malfunctioning wand that had damaged Professor Lockhart’s memory so badly that he had landed here in the first place, though, as Lockhart had been attempting to permanently wipe Harry and Ron’s memories at the time, Harry’s sympathy was limited.

“I’m very well indeed, thank you!” said Lockhart exuberantly, pulling a rather battered peacock-feather quill from his pocket.

“Now, how many autographs would you like? I can do joined-up writing now, you know!”

“Er — we don’t want any at the moment, thanks,” said Ron, raising his eyebrows at Harry, who asked, “Professor, should you be wandering around the corridors? Shouldn’t you be in a ward?”

The smile faded slowly from Lockhart’s face.

For a few moments he gazed intently at Harry, then he said, “Haven’t we met?”

“Er . . . yeah, we have,” said Harry.

“You used to teach us at Hogwarts, remember?”

“Teach?” repeated Lockhart, looking faintly unsettled.

“Me? Did I?”

And then the smile reappeared upon his face so suddenly it was rather alarming.

“Taught you everything you know, I expect, did I?”

“Well, how about those autographs, then? Shall we say a round dozen, you can give them to all your little friends then and nobody will be left out!”

But just then a head poked out of a door at the far end of the corridor and a voice said, “Gilderoy, you naughty boy, where have you wandered off to?”

A motherly looking Healer wearing a tinsel wreath in her hair came bustling up the corridor, smiling warmly at Harry and the others.

“Oh Gilderoy, you’ve got visitors! How lovely, and on Christmas Day too!”

“Do you know, he never gets visitors, poor lamb, and I can’t think why, he’s such a sweetie, aren’t you?”

“We’re doing autographs!” Gilderoy told the Healer with another glittering smile.

“They want loads of them, won’t take no for an answer! I just hope we’ve got enough photographs!”

“Listen to him,” said the Healer, taking Lockhart’s arm and beaming fondly at him as though he were a precocious two-year-old.

“He was rather well known a few years ago; we very much hope that this liking for giving autographs is a sign that his memory might be coming back a little bit.”

“Will you step this way? He’s in a closed ward, you know, he must have slipped out while I was bringing in the Christmas presents, the door’s usually kept locked . . . not that he’s dangerous!”

“But,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “bit of a danger to himself, bless him. . . . Doesn’t know who he is, you see, wanders off and can’t remember how to get back. . . .”

“It is nice of you to have come to see him —”

“Er,” said Ron, gesturing uselessly at the floor above, “actually, we were just — er —”

But the Healer was smiling expectantly at them, and Ron’s feeble mutter of “going to have a cup of tea” trailed away into nothingness.

They looked at one another rather hopelessly and then followed Lockhart and his Healer along the corridor.

“Let’s not stay long,” Ron said quietly.

The Healer pointed her wand at the door of the Janus Thickey ward and muttered “Alohomora.”

The door swung open and she led the way inside, keeping a firm grasp on Gilderoy’s arm until she had settled him into an armchair beside his bed.

“This is our long-term resident ward,” she informed Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny in a low voice.

“For permanent spell damage, you know. Of course, with intensive remedial potions and charms and a bit of luck, we can produce some improvement. . . .”

“Gilderoy does seem to be getting back some sense of himself, and we’ve seen a real improvement in Mr. Bode, he seems to be regaining the power of speech very well, though he isn’t speaking any language we recognize yet. . . .”

“Well, I must finish giving out the Christmas presents, I’ll leave you all to chat . . .”

Harry looked around; this ward bore unmistakable signs of being a permanent home to its residents.

They had many more personal effects around their beds than in Mr. Weasley’s ward.

The wall around Gilderoy’s headboard, for instance, was papered with pictures of himself, all beaming toothily and waving at the new arrivals.

He had autographed many of them to himself in disjointed, childish writing.

The moment he had been deposited in his chair by the Healer, Gilderoy pulled a fresh stack of photographs toward him, seized a quill, and started signing them all feverishly.

“You can put them in envelopes,” he said to Ginny, throwing the signed pictures into her lap one by one as he finished them.

“I am not forgotten, you know, no, I still receive a very great deal of fan mail. . . .”

“Gladys Gudgeon writes weekly. . . . I just wish I knew why . . .”

He paused, looking faintly puzzled, then beamed again and returned to his signing with renewed vigor.

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“I suspect it is simply my good looks . . .”

A sallow-skinned, mournful-looking wizard lay in the bed opposite, staring at the ceiling; he was mumbling to himself and seemed quite unaware of anything around him.

Two beds along was a woman whose entire head was covered in fur; Harry remembered something similar happening to Hermione during their second year, although fortunately the damage, in her case, had not been permanent.

At the far end of the ward flowery curtains had been drawn around two beds to give the occupants and their visitors some privacy.

“Here you are, Agnes,” said the Healer brightly to the furry-faced woman, handing her a small pile of Christmas presents.

“See, not forgotten, are you?”

“And your son’s sent an owl to say he’s visiting tonight, so that’s nice, isn’t it?”

Agnes gave several loud barks.

“And look, Broderick, you’ve been sent a potted plant and a lovely calendar with a different fancy hippogriff for each month, they’ll brighten things up, won’t they?” said the Healer, bustling along to the mumbling man, setting a rather ugly plant with long, swaying tentacles on the bedside cabinet and fixing the calendar to the wall with her wand.

“And — oh, Mrs. Longbottom, are you leaving already?”

Harry’s head spun round.

The curtains had been drawn back from the two beds at the end of the ward and two visitors were walking back down the aisle between the beds: a formidable-looking old witch wearing a long green dress, a moth-eaten fox fur, and a pointed hat decorated with what was unmistakably a stuffed vulture and, trailing behind her looking thoroughly depressed — Neville.

With a sudden rush of understanding, Harry realized who the people in the end beds must be.

He cast around wildly for some means of distracting the others so that Neville could leave the ward unnoticed and unquestioned, but Ron had looked up at the sound of the name “Longbottom” too, and before Harry could stop him had called, “Neville!”

Neville jumped and cowered as though a bullet had narrowly missed him.

“It’s us, Neville!” said Ron brightly, getting to his feet. “Have you seen? Lockhart’s here! Who’ve you been visiting?”

“Friends of yours, Neville, dear?” said Neville’s grandmother graciously, bearing down upon them all.

Neville looked as though he would rather be anywhere in the world but here.

A dull purple flush was creeping up his plump face and he was not making eye contact with any of them.

“Ah, yes,” said his grandmother, peering at Harry and sticking out a shriveled, clawlike hand for him to shake.

“Yes, yes, I know who you are, of course. Neville speaks most highly of you.”

“Er — thanks,” said Harry, shaking hands.

Neville did not look at him, but stared at his own feet, the color deepening in his face all the while.

“And you two are clearly Weasleys,” Mrs. Longbottom continued, proffering her hand regally to Ron and Ginny in turn.

“Yes, I know your parents — not well, of course — but fine people, fine people . . . and you must be Hermione Granger?”

Hermione looked rather startled that Mrs. Longbottom knew her name, but shook hands all the same.

“Yes, Neville’s told me all about you. Helped him out of a few sticky spots, haven’t you? He’s a good boy,” she said, casting a sternly appraising look down her rather bony nose at Neville, “but he hasn’t got his father’s talent, I’m afraid to say . . .”

And she jerked her head in the direction of the two beds at the end of the ward, so that the stuffed vulture on her hat trembled alarmingly.

“What?” said Ron, looking amazed.

Harry wanted to stamp on Ron’s foot, but that sort of thing was much harder to bring off unnoticed when you were wearing jeans rather than robes.

“Is that your dad down the end, Neville?”

“What’s this?” said Mrs. Longbottom sharply.

“Haven’t you told your friends about your parents, Neville?”

Neville took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling, and shook his head.

Harry could not remember ever feeling sorrier for anyone, but he could not think of any way of helping Neville out of the situation.

“Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of!” said Mrs. Longbottom angrily.

“You should be proud, Neville, proud! They didn’t give their health and their sanity so their only son would be ashamed of them, you know!”

“I’m not ashamed,” said Neville very faintly, still looking anywhere but at Harry and the others.

Ron was now standing on tiptoe to look over at the inhabitants of the two beds.

“Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it!” said Mrs. Longbottom.

“My son and his wife,” she said, turning haughtily to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, “were tortured into insanity by You-Know-Who’s followers.”

Hermione and Ginny both clapped their hands over their mouths.

Ron stopped craning his neck to catch a glimpse of Neville’s parents and looked mortified.

“They were Aurors, you know, and very well respected within the Wizarding community,” Mrs. Longbottom went on.

“Highly gifted, the pair of them. I — yes, Alice dear, what is it?”

Neville’s mother had come edging down the ward in her nightdress.

She no longer had the plump, happy-looking face Harry had seen in Moody’s old photograph of the original Order of the Phoenix.

Her face was thin and worn now, her eyes seemed overlarge, and her hair, which had turned white, was wispy and dead-looking.

She did not seem to want to speak, or perhaps she was not able to, but she made timid motions toward Neville, holding something in her outstretched hand.

“Again?” said Mrs. Longbottom, sounding slightly weary.

“Very well, Alice dear, very well — Neville, take it, whatever it is . . .”

But Neville had already stretched out his hand, into which his mother dropped an empty Drooble’s Blowing Gum wrapper.

“Very nice, dear,” said Neville’s grandmother in a falsely cheery voice, patting his mother on the shoulder.

But Neville said quietly, “Thanks Mum.”

His mother tottered away, back up the ward, humming to herself.

Neville looked around at the others, his expression defiant, as though daring them to laugh.

But Harry did not think he’d ever found anything less funny in his life.

“Well, we’d better get back,” sighed Mrs. Longbottom, drawing on long green gloves.

“Very nice to have met you all.”

“Neville, put that wrapper in the bin, she must have given you enough of them to paper your bedroom by now . . .”

But as they left, Harry was sure he saw Neville slip the wrapper into his pocket.

The door closed behind them.

“I never knew,” said Hermione, who looked tearful.

“Nor did I,” said Ron rather hoarsely.

“Nor me,” whispered Ginny.

They all looked at Harry.

“I did,” he said glumly.

“Dumbledore told me but I promised I wouldn’t mention it . . . that’s what Bellatrix Lestrange got sent to Azkaban for, using the Cruciatus Curse on Neville’s parents until they lost their minds.”

“Bellatrix Lestrange did that?” whispered Hermione, horrified.

“That woman Kreacher’s got a photo of in his den?”

There was a long silence, broken by Lockhart’s angry voice.

“Look, I didn’t learn joined-up writing for nothing, you know!”

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CHAPTER XXIV. OCCLUMENCY

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Kreacher, it transpired, had been lurking in the attic.

Sirius said he had found him up there, covered in dust, no doubt looking for more relics of the Black family to hide in his cupboard.

Though Sirius seemed satisfied with this story, it made Harry uneasy.

Kreacher seemed to be in a better mood on his reappearance.

His bitter muttering had subsided somewhat, and he submitted to orders more docilely than usual.

Once or twice Harry caught the house-elf staring avidly at him, always looking quickly away when he saw that Harry had noticed.

Harry did not mention his vague suspicions to Sirius, whose cheerfulness was evaporating fast now that Christmas was over.

As the date of their departure back to Hogwarts drew nearer, he became more and more prone to what Mrs. Weasley called “fits of the sullens,” in which he would become taciturn and grumpy, often withdrawing to Buckbeak’s room for hours at a time.

His gloom seeped through the house, oozing under doorways like some noxious gas, so that all of them became infected by it.

Harry did not want to leave Sirius all alone again with only Kreacher for company.

In fact, for the first time in his life, he was not looking forward to returning to Hogwarts.

Going back to school would mean placing himself once again under the tyranny of Dolores Umbridge.

She had no doubt managed to force through another dozen decrees in their absence.

Then there was no Quidditch to look forward to now that he had been banned.

There was every likelihood that their burden of homework would increase as the exams drew even nearer.

Dumbledore remained as remote as ever.

In fact, if it had not been for the D.A., Harry felt he might have gone to Sirius and begged him to let him leave Hogwarts and remain in Grimmauld Place.

Then, on the very last day of the holidays, something happened that made Harry positively dread his return to school.

“Harry dear,” said Mrs. Weasley, poking her head into his and Ron’s bedroom, where the pair of them were playing wizard chess watched by Hermione, Ginny, and Crookshanks, “could you come down to the kitchen? Professor Snape would like a word with you.”

Harry did not immediately register what she had said.

One of his castles was engaged in a violent tussle with a pawn of Ron’s, and he was egging it on enthusiastically.

“Squash him — squash him, he’s only a pawn, you idiot — sorry, Mrs. Weasley, what did you say?”

“Professor Snape, dear. In the kitchen. He’d like a word.”

Harry’s mouth fell open in horror.

He looked around at Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, all of whom were gaping back at him.

Crookshanks, whom Hermione had been restraining with difficulty for the past quarter of an hour, leapt gleefully upon the board and set the pieces running for cover, squealing at the top of their voices.

“Snape?” said Harry blankly.

“Professor Snape, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley reprovingly. “Now come on, quickly, he says he can’t stay long.”

“What’s he want with you?” said Ron, looking unnerved as Mrs. Weasley withdrew from the room.

“You haven’t done anything, have you?”

“No!” said Harry indignantly, racking his brains to think what he could have done that would make Snape pursue him to Grimmauld Place.

Had his last piece of homework perhaps earned a T?

He pushed open the kitchen door a minute or two later to find Sirius and Snape both seated at the long kitchen table, glaring in opposite directions.

The silence between them was heavy with mutual dislike.

A letter lay open on the table in front of Sirius.

“Er,” said Harry to announce his presence.

Snape looked around at him, his face framed between curtains of greasy black hair.

“Sit down, Potter.”

“You know,” said Sirius loudly, leaning back on his rear chair legs and speaking to the ceiling, “I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t give orders here, Snape. It’s my house, you see.”

An ugly flush suffused Snape’s pallid face.

Harry sat down in a chair beside Sirius, facing Snape across the table.

“I was supposed to see you alone, Potter,” said Snape, the familiar sneer curling his mouth, “but Black —”

“I’m his godfather,” said Sirius, louder than ever.

“I am here on Dumbledore’s orders,” said Snape, whose voice, by contrast, was becoming more and more quietly waspish, “but by all means stay, Black, I know you like to feel . . . involved.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Sirius, letting his chair fall back onto all four legs with a loud bang.

“Merely that I am sure you must feel — ah — frustrated by the fact that you can do nothing useful,” Snape laid a delicate stress on the word, “for the Order.”

It was Sirius’s turn to flush.

Snape’s lip curled in triumph as he turned to Harry.

“The headmaster has sent me to tell you, Potter, that it is his wish for you to study Occlumency this term.”

“Study what?” said Harry blankly.

Snape’s sneer became more pronounced.

“Occlumency, Potter. The magical defense of the mind against external penetration. An obscure branch of magic, but a highly useful one.”

Harry’s heart began to pump very fast indeed.

Defense against external penetration? But he was not being possessed, they had all agreed on that. . . .

“Why do I have to study Occlu — thing?” he blurted out.

“Because the headmaster thinks it a good idea,” said Snape smoothly.

“You will receive private lessons once a week, but you will not tell anybody what you are doing, least of all Dolores Umbridge. You understand?”

“Yes,” said Harry.

“Who’s going to be teaching me?”

Snape raised an eyebrow.

“I am,” he said.

Harry had the horrible sensation that his insides were melting.

Extra lessons with Snape — what on earth had he done to deserve this?

He looked quickly around at Sirius for support.

“Why can’t Dumbledore teach Harry?” asked Sirius aggressively.

“Why you?”

“I suppose because it is a headmaster’s privilege to delegate less enjoyable tasks,” said Snape silkily.

“I assure you I did not beg for the job.”

He got to his feet.

“I will expect you at six o’clock on Monday evening, Potter. My office. If anybody asks, you are taking Remedial Potions. Nobody who has seen you in my classes could deny you need them.”

He turned to leave, his black traveling cloak billowing behind him.

“Wait a moment,” said Sirius, sitting up straighter in his chair.

Snape turned back to face them, sneering.

“I am in rather a hurry, Black . . . unlike you, I do not have unlimited leisure time . . .”

“I’ll get to the point, then,” said Sirius, standing up.

He was rather taller than Snape who, Harry noticed, had balled his fist in the pocket of his cloak over what Harry was sure was the handle of his wand.

“If I hear you’re using these Occlumency lessons to give Harry a hard time, you’ll have me to answer to.”

“How touching,” Snape sneered.

“But surely you have noticed that Potter is very like his father?”

“Yes, I have,” said Sirius proudly.

“Well then, you’ll know he’s so arrogant that criticism simply bounces off him,” Snape said sleekly.

Sirius pushed his chair roughly aside and strode around the table toward Snape, pulling out his wand as he went.

Snape whipped out his own.

They were squaring up to each other, Sirius looking livid, Snape calculating, his eyes darting from Sirius’s wand-tip to his face.

“Sirius!” said Harry loudly, but Sirius appeared not to hear him.

“I’ve warned you, Snivellus,” said Sirius, his face barely a foot from Snape’s, “I don’t care if Dumbledore thinks you’ve reformed, I know better —”

“Oh, but why don’t you tell him so?” whispered Snape.

“Or are you afraid he might not take the advice of a man who has been hiding inside his mother’s house for six months very seriously?”

“Tell me, how is Lucius Malfoy these days? I expect he’s delighted his lapdog’s working at Hogwarts, isn’t he?”

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“Speaking of dogs,” said Snape softly, “did you know that Lucius Malfoy recognized you last time you risked a little jaunt outside?”

“Clever idea, Black, getting yourself seen on a safe station platform . . . gave you a cast-iron excuse not to leave your hidey-hole in future, didn’t it?”

Sirius raised his wand.

“NO!” Harry yelled, vaulting over the table and trying to get in between them.

“Sirius, don’t —”

“Are you calling me a coward?” roared Sirius, trying to push Harry out of the way, but Harry would not budge.

“Why, yes, I suppose I am,” said Snape.

“Harry — get — out — of — it!” snarled Sirius, pushing him out of the way with his free hand.

The kitchen door opened and the entire Weasley family, plus Hermione, came inside, all looking very happy, with Mr. Weasley walking proudly in their midst dressed in a pair of striped pajamas covered by a mackintosh.

“Cured!” he announced brightly to the kitchen at large. “Completely cured!”

He and all the other Weasleys froze on the threshold, gazing at the scene in front of them, which was also suspended in mid-action, both Sirius and Snape looking toward the door with their wands pointing into each other’s faces and Harry immobile between them, a hand stretched out to each of them, trying to force them apart.

“Merlin’s beard,” said Mr. Weasley, the smile sliding off his face, “what’s going on here?”

Both Sirius and Snape lowered their wands.

Harry looked from one to the other.

Each wore an expression of utmost contempt, yet the unexpected entrance of so many witnesses seemed to have brought them to their senses.

Snape pocketed his wand and swept back across the kitchen, passing the Weasleys without comment.

At the door he looked back.

“Six o’clock Monday evening, Potter.”

He was gone.

Sirius glared after him, his wand at his side.

“But what’s been going on?” asked Mr. Weasley again.

“Nothing, Arthur,” said Sirius, who was breathing heavily as though he had just run a long distance. “Just a friendly little chat between two old school friends . . .”

With what looked like an enormous effort, he smiled. “So . . . you’re cured? That’s great news, really great . . .”

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Weasley, leading her husband forward into a chair.

“Healer Smethwyck worked his magic in the end, found an antidote to whatever that snake’s got in its fangs, and Arthur’s learned his lesson about dabbling in Muggle medicine, haven’t you, dear?” she added, rather menacingly.

“Yes, Molly dear,” said Mr. Weasley meekly.

That night’s meal should have been a cheerful one with Mr. Weasley back amongst them; Harry could tell Sirius was trying to make it so, yet when his godfather was not forcing himself to laugh loudly at Fred and George’s jokes or offering everyone more food, his face fell back into a moody, brooding expression.

Harry was separated from him by Mundungus and Mad-Eye, who had dropped in to offer Mr. Weasley their congratulations.

He wanted to talk to Sirius, to tell him that he should not listen to a word Snape said, that Snape was goading him deliberately and that the rest of them did not think Sirius was a coward for doing as Dumbledore told him and remaining in Grimmauld Place, but he had no opportunity to do so, and wondered occasionally, eyeing the ugly look on Sirius’s face, whether he would have dared to even if he had the chance.

Instead he told Ron and Hermione under his voice about having to take Occlumency lessons with Snape.

“Dumbledore wants to stop you having those dreams about Voldemort,” said Hermione at once. “Well, you won’t be sorry not to have them anymore, will you?”

“Extra lessons with Snape?” said Ron, sounding aghast. “I’d rather have the nightmares!”

They were to return to Hogwarts on the Knight Bus the following day, escorted once again by Tonks and Lupin, both of whom were eating breakfast in the kitchen when Harry, Ron, and Hermione arrived there next morning.

The adults seemed to have been midway through a whispered conversation when the door opened; all of them looked around hastily and fell silent.

After a hurried breakfast they pulled on jackets and scarves against the chilly gray January morning.

Harry had an unpleasant constricted sensation in his chest; he did not want to say good-bye to Sirius.

He had a bad feeling about this parting; he did not know when they would next see each other and felt that it was incumbent upon him to say something to Sirius to stop him doing anything stupid — Harry was worried that Snape’s accusation of cowardice had stung Sirius so badly he might even now be planning some foolhardy trip beyond Grimmauld Place.

Before he could think of what to say, however, Sirius had beckoned him to his side.

“I want you to take this,” he said quietly, thrusting a badly wrapped package roughly the size of a paperback book into Harry’s hands.

“What is it?” Harry asked.

“A way of letting me know if Snape’s giving you a hard time. No, don’t open it in here!” said Sirius, with a wary look at Mrs. Weasley, who was trying to persuade the twins to wear hand-knitted mittens.

“I doubt Molly would approve — but I want you to use it if you need me, all right?”

“Okay,” said Harry, stowing the package away in the inside pocket of his jacket, but he knew he would never use whatever it was.

It would not be he, Harry, who lured Sirius from his place of safety, no matter how foully Snape treated him in their forthcoming Occlumency classes.

“Let’s go, then,” said Sirius, clapping Harry on the shoulder and smiling grimly, and before Harry could say anything else, they were heading upstairs, stopping before the heavily chained and bolted front door, surrounded by Weasleys.

“Good-bye, Harry, take care,” said Mrs. Weasley, hugging him.

“See you Harry, and keep an eye out for snakes for me!” said Mr. Weasley genially, shaking his hand.

“Right — yeah,” said Harry distractedly.

It was his last chance to tell Sirius to be careful.

He turned, looked into his godfather’s face and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could do so Sirius was giving him a brief, one-armed hug.

He said gruffly, “Look after yourself, Harry,” and next moment Harry found himself being shunted out into the icy winter air, with Tonks (today heavily disguised as a tall, tweedy woman with iron-gray hair) chivvying him down the steps.

The door of number twelve slammed shut behind them.

They followed Lupin down the front steps.

As he reached the pavement, Harry looked around.

Number twelve was shrinking rapidly as those on either side of it stretched sideways, squeezing it out of sight; one blink later, it had gone.

“Come on, the quicker we get on the bus the better,” said Tonks, and Harry thought there was nervousness in the glance she threw around the square.

Lupin flung out his right arm.

BANG.

A violently purple, triple-decker bus had appeared out of thin air in front of them, narrowly avoiding the nearest lamppost, which jumped backward out of its way.

A thin, pimply, jug-eared youth in a purple uniform leapt down onto the pavement and said, “Welcome to the —”

“Yes, yes, we know, thank you,” said Tonks swiftly. “On, on, get on —”

And she shoved Harry forward toward the steps, past the conductor, who goggled at Harry as he passed.

“’Ere — it’s ’Arry — !”

“If you shout his name I will curse you into oblivion,” muttered Tonks menacingly, now shunting Ginny and Hermione forward.

“I’ve always wanted to go on this thing,” said Ron happily, joining Harry on board and looking around.

It had been evening the last time Harry had traveled by Knight Bus and its three decks had been full of brass bedsteads.

Now, in the early morning, it was crammed with an assortment of mismatched chairs grouped haphazardly around windows.

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Some of these appeared to have fallen over when the bus stopped abruptly in Grimmauld Place; a few witches and wizards were still getting to their feet, grumbling, and somebody’s shopping bag had slid the length of the bus; an unpleasant mixture of frog spawn, cockroaches, and custard creams was scattered all over the floor.

“Looks like we’ll have to split up,” said Tonks briskly, looking around for empty chairs. “Fred, George, and Ginny, if you just take those seats at the back . . . Remus can stay with you . . .”

She, Harry, Ron, and Hermione proceeded up to the very top deck, where there were two chairs at the very front of the bus and two at the back.

Stan Shunpike, the conductor, followed Harry and Ron eagerly to the back.

Heads turned as Harry passed and when he sat down, he saw all the faces flick back to the front again.

As Harry and Ron handed Stan eleven Sickles each, the bus set off again, swaying ominously.

It rumbled around Grimmauld Square, weaving on and off the pavement, then, with another tremendous BANG, they were all flung backward; Ron’s chair toppled right over and Pigwidgeon, who had been on his lap, burst out of his cage and flew twittering wildly up to the front of the bus where he fluttered down upon Hermione’s shoulder instead.

Harry, who had narrowly avoided falling by seizing a candle bracket, looked out of the window: they were now speeding down what appeared to be a motorway.

“Just outside Birmingham,” said Stan happily, answering Harry’s unasked question as Ron struggled up from the floor.

“You keepin’ well, then, ’Arry? I seen your name in the paper loads over the summer, but it weren’t never nuffink very nice. . . . I said to Ern, I said, ‘’e didn’t seem like a nutter when we met ’im, just goes to show, dunnit?’”

He handed over their tickets and continued to gaze, enthralled, at Harry; apparently Stan did not care how nutty somebody was if they were famous enough to be in the paper.

The Knight Bus swayed alarmingly, overtaking a line of cars on the inside.

Looking toward the front of the bus Harry saw Hermione cover her eyes with her hands, Pigwidgeon still swaying happily on her shoulder.

BANG.

Chairs slid backward again as the Knight Bus jumped from the Birmingham motorway to a quiet country lane full of hairpin bends.

Hedgerows on either side of the road were leaping out of their way as they mounted the verges.

From here they moved to a main street in the middle of a busy town, then to a viaduct surrounded by tall hills, then to a windswept road between high-rise flats, each time with a loud BANG.

“I’ve changed my mind,” muttered Ron, picking himself up from the floor for the sixth time, “I never want to ride on here again.”

“Listen, it’s ’Ogwarts stop after this,” said Stan brightly, swaying toward them.

“That bossy woman up front ’oo got on with you, she’s given us a little tip to move you up the queue."

"We’re just gonna let Madam Marsh off first, though —”

There was more retching from downstairs, followed by a horrible spattering sound.

“She’s not feeling ’er best.”

A few minutes later the Knight Bus screeched to a halt outside a small pub, which squeezed itself out of the way to avoid a collision.

They could hear Stan ushering the unfortunate Madam Marsh out of the bus and the relieved murmurings of her fellow passengers on the second deck.

The bus moved on again, gathering speed, until —

BANG.

They were rolling through a snowy Hogsmeade.

Harry caught a glimpse of the Hog’s Head down its side street, the severed boar’s head sign creaking in the wintry wind.

Flecks of snow hit the large window at the front of the bus.

At last they rolled to a halt outside the gates to Hogwarts.

Lupin and Tonks helped them off the bus with their luggage and then got off to say good-bye.

Harry glanced up at the three decks of the Knight Bus and saw all the passengers staring down at them, noses flat against the windows.

“You’ll be safe once you’re in the grounds,” said Tonks, casting a careful eye around at the deserted road.

“Have a good term, okay?”

“Look after yourselves,” said Lupin, shaking hands all round and reaching Harry last.

“And listen . . .” He lowered his voice while the rest of them exchanged last-minute good-byes with Tonks.

“Harry, I know you don’t like Snape, but he is a superb Occlumens and we all — Sirius included — want you to learn to protect yourself, so work hard, all right?”

“Yeah, all right,” said Harry heavily, looking up into Lupin’s prematurely lined face.

“See you, then . . .”

The six of them struggled up the slippery drive toward the castle dragging their trunks.

Hermione was already talking about knitting a few elf hats before bedtime.

Harry glanced back when they reached the oak front doors; the Knight Bus had already gone.

He half-wished, given what was coming the following day, that he was still on board.

Harry spent most of the next day dreading the evening.

His morning Potions lesson did nothing to dispel his trepidation, as Snape was as unpleasant as ever.

Harry’s mood was further lowered by the fact that members of the D.A. were continually approaching him in the corridors between classes, asking hopefully whether there would be a meeting that night.

“I’ll let you know when the next one is,” Harry said over and over again.

“But I can’t do it tonight, I’ve got to go to — er — Remedial Potions . . .”

“You take Remedial Potions?” asked Zacharias Smith superciliously, having cornered Harry in the entrance hall after lunch.

“Good Lord, you must be terrible, Snape doesn’t usually give extra lessons, does he?”

As Smith strode away in an annoyingly buoyant fashion, Ron glared after him.

“Shall I jinx him? I can still get him from here,” he said, raising his wand and taking aim between Smith’s shoulder blades.

“Forget it,” said Harry dismally.

“It’s what everyone’s going to think, isn’t it? That I’m really stup —”

“Hi, Harry,” said a voice behind him.

He turned around and found Cho standing there.

“Oh,” said Harry as his stomach leapt uncomfortably.

“Hi.”

“We’ll be in the library, Harry,” said Hermione firmly, and she seized Ron above the elbow and dragged him off toward the marble staircase.

“Had a good Christmas?” asked Cho.

“Yeah, not bad,” said Harry.

“Mine was pretty quiet,” said Cho.

For some reason, she was looking rather embarrassed.

“Erm . . . there’s another Hogsmeade trip next month, did you see the notice?”

“What? Oh no, I haven’t checked the notice board since I got back . . .”

“Yes, it’s on Valentine’s Day . . .”

“Right,” said Harry, wondering why she was telling him this.

“Well, I suppose you want to — ?”

“Only if you do,” she said eagerly.

Harry stared.

He had been about to say “I suppose you want to know when the next D.A. meeting is?” but her response did not seem to fit.

“I — er —” he said.

“Oh, it’s okay if you don’t,” she said, looking mortified.

“Don’t worry. I’ll see you around.”

She walked away.

Harry stood staring after her, his brain working frantically.

Then something clunked into place.

“Cho! Hey — CHO!”

He ran after her, catching her halfway up the marble staircase.

“Er — d’you want to come into Hogsmeade with me on Valentine’s Day?”

“Oooh, yes!” she said, blushing crimson and beaming at him.

“Right . . . well . . . that’s settled then,” said Harry.

Feeling that the day was not going to be a complete loss after all, he headed off to the library to pick up Ron and Hermione before their afternoon lessons, walking in a rather bouncy way himself.

By six o’clock that evening, however, even the glow of having successfully asked out Cho Chang was insufficient to lighten the ominous feelings that intensified with every step Harry took toward Snape’s office.

He paused outside the door when he reached it, wishing he were almost anywhere else.

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Then, taking a deep breath, knocked, and entered.

It was a shadowy room lined with shelves bearing hundreds of glass jars in which floated slimy bits of animals and plants, suspended in variously colored potions.

In a corner stood the cupboard full of ingredients that Snape had once accused Harry — not without reason — of robbing.

Harry’s attention was drawn toward the desk, however, where a shallow stone basin engraved with runes and symbols lay in a pool of candlelight.

Harry recognized it at once — Dumbledore’s Pensieve.

Wondering what on earth it was doing here, he jumped when Snape’s cold voice came out of the corner.

“Shut the door behind you, Potter.”

Harry did as he was told with the horrible feeling that he was imprisoning himself as he did so.

When he turned back to face the room Snape had moved into the light and was pointing silently at the chair opposite his desk.

Harry sat down and so did Snape, his cold black eyes fixed unblinkingly upon Harry, dislike etched in every line of his face.

“Well, Potter, you know why you are here,” he said.

“The headmaster has asked me to teach you Occlumency.

I can only hope that you prove more adept at it than Potions.”

“Right,” said Harry tersely.

“This may not be an ordinary class, Potter,” said Snape, his eyes narrowed malevolently.

“But I am still your teacher and you will therefore call me ‘sir’ or ‘Professor’ at all times.”

“Yes . . . sir,” said Harry.

“Now, Occlumency.

As I told you back in your dear godfather’s kitchen, this branch of magic seals the mind against magical intrusion and influence.”

“And why does Professor Dumbledore think I need it, sir?” said Harry, looking directly into Snape’s dark, cold eyes and wondering whether he would answer.

Snape looked back at him for a moment and then said contemptuously, “Surely even you could have worked that out by now, Potter?

The Dark Lord is highly skilled at Legilimency —”

“What’s that?

Sir?”

“It is the ability to extract feelings and memories from another person’s mind —”

“He can read minds?” said Harry quickly, his worst fears confirmed.

“You have no subtlety, Potter,” said Snape, his dark eyes glittering.

“You do not understand fine distinctions.

It is one of the shortcomings that makes you such a lamentable potion-maker.”

Snape paused for a moment, apparently to savor the pleasure of insulting Harry, before continuing.

“Only Muggles talk of ‘mind reading.’

The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure.

Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by any invader.

The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, Potter . . . or at least, most minds are . . .”

He smirked.

“It is true, however, that those who have mastered Legilimency are able, under certain conditions, to delve into the minds of their victims and to interpret their findings correctly.

The Dark Lord, for instance, almost always knows when somebody is lying to him.

Only those skilled at Occlumency are able to shut down those feelings and memories that contradict the lie, and so utter falsehoods in his presence without detection.”

Whatever Snape said, Legilimency sounded like mind reading to Harry and he did not like the sound of it at all.

“So he could know what we’re thinking right now?

Sir?”

“The Dark Lord is at a considerable distance and the walls and grounds of Hogwarts are guarded by many ancient spells and charms to ensure the bodily and mental safety of those who dwell within them,” said Snape.

“Time and space matter in magic, Potter.

Eye contact is often essential to Legilimency.”

“Well then, why do I have to learn Occlumency?”

Snape eyed Harry, tracing his mouth with one long, thin finger as he did so.

“The usual rules do not seem to apply with you, Potter.

The curse that failed to kill you seems to have forged some kind of connection between you and the Dark Lord.

The evidence suggests that at times, when your mind is most relaxed and vulnerable — when you are asleep, for instance — you are sharing the Dark Lord’s thoughts and emotions.

The headmaster thinks it inadvisable for this to continue.

He wishes me to teach you how to close your mind to the Dark Lord.”

Harry’s heart was pumping fast again.

None of this added up.

“But why does Professor Dumbledore want to stop it?” he asked abruptly.

“I don’t like it much, but it’s been useful, hasn’t it?

I mean . . . I saw that snake attack Mr. Weasley and if I hadn’t, Professor Dumbledore wouldn’t have been able to save him, would he?

Sir?”

Snape stared at Harry for a few moments, still tracing his mouth with his finger.

When he spoke again, it was slowly and deliberately, as though he weighed every word.

“It appears that the Dark Lord has been unaware of the connection between you and himself until very recently.

Up till now it seems that you have been experiencing his emotions and sharing his thoughts without his being any the wiser.

However, the vision you had shortly before Christmas —”

“The one with the snake and Mr. Weasley?”

“Do not interrupt me, Potter,” said Snape in a dangerous voice.

“As I was saying . . . the vision you had shortly before Christmas represented such a powerful incursion upon the Dark Lord’s thoughts —”

“I saw inside the snake’s head, not his!”

“I thought I just told you not to interrupt me, Potter?”

But Harry did not care if Snape was angry; at last he seemed to be getting to the bottom of this business.

He had moved forward in his chair so that, without realizing it, he was perched on the very edge, tense as though poised for flight.

“How come I saw through the snake’s eyes if it’s Voldemort’s thoughts I’m sharing?”

“Do not say the Dark Lord’s name!” spat Snape.

There was a nasty silence.

They glared at each other across the Pensieve.

“Professor Dumbledore says his name,” said Harry quietly.

“Dumbledore is an extremely powerful wizard,” Snape muttered.

“While he may feel secure enough to use the name . . . the rest of us . . .”

He rubbed his left forearm, apparently unconsciously, on the spot where Harry knew the Dark Mark was burned into his skin.

“I just wanted to know,” Harry began again, forcing his voice back to politeness, “why —”

“You seem to have visited the snake’s mind because that was where the Dark Lord was at that particular moment,” snarled Snape.

“He was possessing the snake at the time and so you dreamed you were inside it too . . .”

“And Vol — he — realized I was there?”

“It seems so,” said Snape coolly.

“How do you know?” said Harry urgently.

“Is this just Professor Dumbledore guessing, or — ?”

“I told you,” said Snape, rigid in his chair, his eyes slits, “to call me ‘sir.’”

“Yes, sir,” said Harry impatiently, “but how do you know — ?”

“It is enough that we know,” said Snape repressively.

“The important point is that the Dark Lord is now aware that you are gaining access to his thoughts and feelings.

He has also deduced that the process is likely to work in reverse; that is to say, he has realized that he might be able to access your thoughts and feelings in return —”

“And he might try and make me do things?” asked Harry.

“Sir?” he added hurriedly.

“He might,” said Snape, sounding cold and unconcerned.

“Which brings us back to Occlumency.”

Snape pulled out his wand from an inside pocket of his robes and Harry tensed in his chair, but Snape merely raised the wand to his temple and placed its tip into the greasy roots of his hair.

When he withdrew it, some silvery substance came away, stretching from temple to wand like a thick gossamer strand, which broke as he pulled the wand away from it and fell gracefully into the Pensieve, where it swirled silvery white, neither gas nor liquid.

Twice more Snape raised the wand to his temple and deposited the silvery substance into the stone basin, then, without offering any explanation of his behavior, he picked up the Pensieve carefully, removed it to a shelf out of their way and returned to face Harry with his wand held at the ready.

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“Stand up and take out your wand, Potter.”

Harry got to his feet feeling nervous.

They faced each other with the desk between them.

“You may use your wand to attempt to disarm me, or defend yourself in any other way you can think of,” said Snape.

“And what are you going to do?” Harry asked, eyeing Snape’s wand apprehensively.

“I am about to attempt to break into your mind,” said Snape softly.

“We are going to see how well you resist.

I have been told that you have already shown aptitude at resisting the Imperius Curse. . . .

You will find that similar powers are needed for this. . . .

Brace yourself, now. . . .

Legilimens!”

Snape had struck before Harry was ready, before Harry had even begun to summon any force of resistance.

The office swam in front of his eyes and vanished, image after image was racing through his mind like a flickering film so vivid it blinded him to his surroundings. . . .

He was five, watching Dudley riding a new red bicycle, and his heart was bursting with jealousy. . . .

He was nine, and Ripper the bulldog was chasing him up a tree and the Dursleys were laughing below on the lawn. . . .

He was sitting under the Sorting Hat, and it was telling him he would do well in Slytherin. . . .

Hermione was lying in the hospital wing, her face covered with thick black hair. . . .

A hundred dementors were closing in on him beside the dark lake. . . .

Cho Chang was drawing nearer to him under the mistletoe. . . .

No, said a voice in Harry’s head, as the memory of Cho drew nearer, you’re not watching that, you’re not watching it, it’s private —

He felt a sharp pain in his knee.

Snape’s office had come back into view and he realized that he had fallen to the floor; one of his knees had collided painfully with the leg of Snape’s desk.

He looked up at Snape, who had lowered his wand and was rubbing his wrist.

There was an angry weal there, like a scorch mark.

“Did you mean to produce a Stinging Hex?” asked Snape coolly.

“No,” said Harry bitterly, getting up from the floor.

“I thought not,” said Snape contemptuously.

“You let me get in too far.

You lost control.”

“Did you see everything I saw?” Harry asked, unsure whether he wanted to hear the answer.

“Flashes of it,” said Snape, his lip curling.

“To whom did the dog belong?”

“My Aunt Marge,” Harry muttered, hating Snape.

“Well, for a first attempt that was not as poor as it might have been,” said Snape, raising his wand once more.

“You managed to stop me eventually, though you wasted time and energy shouting.

You must remain focused.

Repel me with your brain and you will not need to resort to your wand.”

“I’m trying,” said Harry angrily, “but you’re not telling me how!”

“Manners, Potter,” said Snape dangerously.

“Now, I want you to close your eyes.”

Harry threw him a filthy look before doing as he was told.

He did not like the idea of standing there with his eyes shut while Snape faced him, carrying a wand.

“Clear your mind, Potter,” said Snape’s cold voice.

“Let go of all emotion . . .”

But Harry’s anger at Snape continued to pound through his veins like venom.

Let go of his anger?

He could as easily detach his legs . . .

“You’re not doing it, Potter. . . . You will need more discipline than this. . . . Focus, now . . .”

Harry tried to empty his mind, tried not to think, or remember, or feel. . . .

“Let’s go again . . . on the count of three . . . one — two — three —

Legilimens!”

A great black dragon was rearing in front of him. . . .

His father and mother were waving at him out of an enchanted mirror. . . .

Cedric Diggory was lying on the ground with blank eyes staring at him . . .

“NOOOOOOO!”

He was on his knees again, his face buried in his hands, his brain aching as though someone had been trying to pull it from his skull.

“Get up!” said Snape sharply.

“Get up!

You are not trying, you are making no effort, you are allowing me access to memories you fear, handing me weapons!”

Harry stood up again, his heart thumping wildly as though he had really just seen Cedric dead in the graveyard.

Snape looked paler than usual, and angrier, though not nearly as angry as Harry was.

“I — am — making — an — effort,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I told you to empty yourself of emotion!”

“Yeah?

Well, I’m finding that hard at the moment,” Harry snarled.

“Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!” said Snape savagely.

“Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers!

He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!”

“I am not weak,” said Harry in a low voice, fury now pumping through him so that he thought he might attack Snape in a moment.

“Then prove it!

Master yourself!” spat Snape.

“Control your anger, discipline your mind!

We shall try again!

Get ready, now!

Legilimens!”

He was watching Uncle Vernon hammering the letter box shut. . . .

A hundred dementors were drifting across the lake in the grounds toward him. . . .

He was running along a windowless passage with Mr. Weasley. . . .

They were drawing nearer to the plain black door at the end of the corridor. . . .

Harry expected to go through it . . . but Mr. Weasley led him off to the left, down a flight of stone steps. . . .

“I KNOW!

I KNOW!”

He was on all fours again on Snape’s office floor, his scar was prickling unpleasantly, but the voice that had just issued from his mouth was triumphant.

He pushed himself up again to find Snape staring at him, his wand raised.

It looked as though, this time, Snape had lifted the spell before Harry had even tried to fight back.

“What happened then, Potter?” he asked, eyeing Harry intently.

“I saw — I remembered,” Harry panted.

“I’ve just realized . . .”

“Realized what?” asked Snape sharply.

Harry did not answer at once; he was still savoring the moment of blinding realization as he rubbed his forehead. . . .

He had been dreaming about a windowless corridor ending in a locked door for months, without once realizing that it was a real place.

Now, seeing the memory again, he knew that all along he had been dreaming about the corridor down which he had run with Mr. Weasley on the twelfth of August as they hurried to the courtrooms in the Ministry.

It was the corridor leading to the Department of Mysteries, and Mr. Weasley had been there the night that he had been attacked by Voldemort’s snake. . . .

He looked up at Snape.

“What’s in the Department of Mysteries?”

“What did you say?” Snape asked quietly and Harry saw, with deep satisfaction, that Snape was unnerved.

“I said, what’s in the Department of Mysteries, sir?” Harry said.

“And why,” said Snape slowly, “would you ask such a thing?”

“Because,” said Harry, watching Snape closely for a reaction, “that corridor I’ve just seen — I’ve been dreaming about it for months — I’ve just recognized it — it leads to the Department of Mysteries . . . and I think Voldemort wants something from —”

“I have told you not to say the Dark Lord’s name!”

They glared at each other.

Harry’s scar seared again, but he did not care.

Snape looked agitated.

When he spoke again he sounded as though he was trying to appear cool and unconcerned.

“There are many things in the Department of Mysteries, Potter, few of which you would understand and none of which concern you, do I make myself plain?”

“Yes,” Harry said, still rubbing his prickling scar, which was becoming more painful.

“I want you back here same time on Wednesday, and we will continue work then.”

“Fine,” said Harry.

He was desperate to get out of Snape’s office and find Ron and Hermione.

“You are to rid your mind of all emotion every night before sleep — empty it, make it blank and calm, you understand?”

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“Yes,” said Harry, who was barely listening.

“And be warned, Potter . . . I shall know if you have not practiced . . .”

“Right,” Harry mumbled.

He picked up his schoolbag, swung it over his shoulder, and hurried toward the office door.

As he opened it he glanced back at Snape, who had his back to Harry and was scooping his own thoughts out of the Pensieve with the tip of his wand and replacing them carefully inside his own head.

Harry left without another word, closing the door carefully behind him, his scar still throbbing painfully.

Harry found Ron and Hermione in the library, where they were working on Umbridge’s most recent ream of homework.

Other students, nearly all of them fifth years, sat at lamp-lit tables nearby, noses close to books, quills scratching feverishly, while the sky outside the mullioned windows grew steadily blacker.

The only other sound was the slight squeaking of one of Madam Pince’s shoes as the librarian prowled the aisles menacingly, breathing down the necks of those touching her precious books.

Harry felt shivery; his scar was still aching, he felt almost feverish.

When he sat down opposite Ron and Hermione he caught sight of himself in the window opposite.

He was very white, and his scar seemed to be showing up more clearly than usual.

“How did it go?” Hermione whispered, and then, looking concerned, “Are you all right, Harry?”

“Yeah . . . fine . . . I dunno,” said Harry impatiently, wincing as pain shot through his scar again.

“Listen . . . I’ve just realized something . . .”

And he told them what he had just seen and deduced.

“So . . . so, are you saying . . .” whispered Ron, as Madam Pince swept past, squeaking slightly, “that the weapon — the thing You-Know-Who’s after — is in the Ministry of Magic?”

“In the Department of Mysteries, it’s got to be,” Harry whispered.

“I saw that door when your dad took me down to the courtrooms for my hearing and it’s definitely the same one he was guarding when the snake bit him.”

Hermione let out a long, slow sigh.

“Of course,” she breathed.

“Of course what?” said Ron rather impatiently.

“Ron, think about it. . . . Sturgis Podmore was trying to get through a door at the Ministry of Magic. . . . It must have been that one, it’s too much of a coincidence!”

“How come Sturgis was trying to break in when he’s on our side?” said Ron.

“Well, I don’t know,” Hermione admitted.

“That is a bit odd . . .”

“So what’s in the Department of Mysteries?” Harry asked Ron.

“Has your dad ever mentioned anything about it?”

“I know they call the people who work in there ‘Unspeakables,’” said Ron, frowning.

“Because no one really seems to know what they do in there. . . . Weird place to have a weapon . . .”

“It’s not weird at all, it makes perfect sense,” said Hermione.

“It will be something top secret that the Ministry has been developing, I expect. . . . Harry, are you sure you’re all right?”

For Harry had just run both his hands hard over his forehead as though trying to iron it.

“Yeah . . . fine . . .” he said, lowering his hands, which were trembling.

“I just feel a bit . . . I don’t like Occlumency much . . .”

“I expect anyone would feel shaky if they’d had their mind attacked over and over again,” said Hermione sympathetically.

“Look, let’s get back to the common room, we’ll be a bit more comfortable there . . .”

But the common room was packed and full of shrieks of laughter and excitement; Fred and George were demonstrating their latest bit of joke shop merchandise.

“Headless Hats!” shouted George, as Fred waved a pointed hat decorated with a fluffy pink feather at the watching students.

“Two Galleons each — watch Fred, now!”

Fred swept the hat onto his head, beaming.

For a second he merely looked rather stupid, then both hat and head vanished.

Several girls screamed, but everyone else was roaring with laughter.

“And off again!” shouted George, and Fred’s hand groped for a moment in what seemed to be thin air over his shoulder; then his head reappeared as he swept the pink-feathered hat from it again.

“How do those hats work, then?” said Hermione, distracted from her homework and watching Fred and George.

“I mean, obviously it’s some kind of Invisibility Spell, but it’s rather clever to have extended the field of invisibility beyond the boundaries of the charmed object. . . . I’d imagine the charm wouldn’t have a very long life though . . .”

Harry did not answer; he was still feeling ill.

“I’m going to have to do this tomorrow,” he muttered, pushing the books he had just taken out of his bag back inside it.

“Well, write it in your homework planner then!” said Hermione encouragingly.

“So you don’t forget!”

Harry and Ron exchanged looks as he reached into his bag, withdrew the planner and opened it tentatively.

“Don’t leave it till later, you big second-rater!” chided the book as Harry scribbled down Umbridge’s homework.

Hermione beamed at it.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” said Harry, stuffing the homework planner back into his bag and making a mental note to drop it in the fire the first opportunity he got.

He walked across the common room, dodging George, who tried to put a Headless Hat on him, and reached the peace and cool of the stone staircase to the boys’ dormitories.

He was feeling sick again, just as he had the night he had had the vision of the snake, but thought that if he could just lie down for a while he would be all right.

He opened the door of his dormitory and was one step inside it when he experienced pain so severe he thought that someone must have sliced into the top of his head.

He did not know where he was, whether he was standing or lying down, he did not even know his own name. . . .

Maniacal laughter was ringing in his ears. . . .

He was happier than he had been in a very long time. . . .

Jubilant, ecstatic, triumphant . . .

A wonderful, wonderful thing had happened. . . .

“Harry? HARRY!”

Someone had hit him around the face.

The insane laughter was punctuated with a cry of pain.

The happiness was draining out of him, but the laughter continued. . . .

He opened his eyes and as he did so, he became aware that the wild laughter was coming out of his own mouth.

The moment he realized this, it died away; Harry lay panting on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, the scar on his forehead throbbing horribly.

Ron was bending over him, looking very worried.

“What happened?” he said.

“I . . . dunno . . .” Harry gasped, sitting up again.

“He’s really happy . . . really happy . . .”

“You-Know-Who is?”

“Something good’s happened,” mumbled Harry.

He was shaking as badly as he had done after seeing the snake attack Mr. Weasley and felt very sick.

“Something he’s been hoping for.”

The words came, just as they had back in the Gryffindor changing room, as though a stranger was speaking them through Harry’s mouth, yet he knew they were true.

He took deep breaths, willing himself not to vomit all over Ron.

He was very glad that Dean and Seamus were not here to watch this time.

“Hermione told me to come and check on you,” said Ron in a low voice, helping Harry to his feet.

“She says your defenses will be low at the moment, after Snape’s been fiddling around with your mind. . . .

Still, I suppose it’ll help in the long run, won’t it?”

He looked doubtfully at Harry as he helped him toward bed.

Harry nodded without any conviction and slumped back on his pillows, aching all over from having fallen to the floor so often that evening, his scar still prickling painfully.

He could not help feeling that his first foray into Occlumency had weakened his mind’s resistance rather than strengthening it.

And he wondered, with a feeling of great trepidation, what had happened to make Lord Voldemort the happiest he had been in fourteen years.