[Part 13] "Harry Potter and Order of Phoenix" by Rowling J.K.

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CHAPTER XXV. THE BEETLE AT BAY

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Harry’s question was answered the very next morning.

When Hermione’s Daily Prophet arrived, she smoothed it out, gazed for a moment at the front page, and then gave a yelp that caused everyone in the vicinity to stare at her.

“What?” said Harry and Ron together.

For an answer, she spread the newspaper on the table in front of them and pointed at ten black-and-white photographs that filled the whole of the front page, nine showing wizards’ faces and the tenth, a witch’s.

Some of the people in the photographs were silently jeering; others were tapping their fingers on the frame of their pictures, looking insolent.

Each picture was captioned with a name and the crime for which the person had been sent to Azkaban.

Antonin Dolohov, read the legend beneath a wizard with a long, pale, twisted face who was sneering up at Harry, convicted of the brutal murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett.

Augustus Rookwood, said the caption beneath a pockmarked man with greasy hair who was leaning against the edge of his picture, looking bored, convicted of leaking Ministry of Magic secrets to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

But Harry’s eyes were drawn to the picture of the witch.

Her face had leapt out at him the moment he had seen the page.

She had long, dark hair that looked unkempt and straggly in the picture, though he had seen it sleek, thick, and shining.

She glared up at him through heavily lidded eyes, an arrogant, disdainful smile playing around her thin mouth.

Like Sirius, she retained vestiges of great good looks, but something — perhaps Azkaban — had taken most of her beauty.

Bellatrix Lestrange, convicted of the torture and permanent incapacitation of Frank and Alice Longbottom.

Hermione nudged Harry and pointed at the headline over the pictures, which Harry, concentrating on Bellatrix, had not yet read.

MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS “RALLYING POINT” FOR OLD DEATH EATERS.

“Black?” said Harry loudly.

“Not — ?”

“Shhh!” whispered Hermione desperately.

“Not so loud — just read it!”

The Ministry of Magic announced late last night that there has been a mass breakout from Azkaban.

Speaking to reporters in his private office, Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, confirmed that ten high-security prisoners escaped in the early hours of yesterday evening, and that he has already informed the Muggle Prime Minister of the dangerous nature of these individuals.

“We find ourselves, most unfortunately, in the same position we were two and a half years ago when the murderer Sirius Black escaped,” said Fudge last night.

“Nor do we think the two breakouts are unrelated.

An escape of this magnitude suggests outside help, and we must remember that Black, as the first person ever to break out of Azkaban, would be ideally placed to help others follow in his footsteps.

We think it likely that these individuals, who include Black’s cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, have rallied around Black as their leader.

We are, however, doing all we can to round up the criminals and beg the magical community to remain alert and cautious.

On no account should any of these individuals be approached.”

“There you are, Harry,” said Ron, looking awestruck.

“That’s why he was happy last night . . .”

“I don’t believe this,” snarled Harry.

“Fudge is blaming the breakout on Sirius?”

“What other options does he have?” said Hermione bitterly.

“He can hardly say, ‘Sorry everyone, Dumbledore warned me this might happen, the Azkaban guards have joined Lord Voldemort’ — stop whimpering, Ron — ‘and now Voldemort’s worst supporters have broken out too.’

I mean, he’s spent a good six months telling everyone you and Dumbledore are liars, hasn’t he?”

Hermione ripped open the newspaper and began to read the report inside while Harry looked around the Great Hall.

He could not understand why his fellow students were not looking scared or at least discussing the terrible piece of news on the front page, but very few of them took the newspaper every day like Hermione.

There they all were, talking about homework and Quidditch and who knew what other rubbish, and outside these walls ten more Death Eaters had swollen Voldemort’s ranks. . . .

He glanced up at the staff table.

It was a different story here: Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were deep in conversation, both looking extremely grave.

Professor Sprout had the Prophet propped against a bottle of ketchup and was reading the front page with such concentration that she was not noticing the gentle drip of egg yolk falling into her lap from her stationary spoon.

Meanwhile, at the far end of the table, Professor Umbridge was tucking into a bowl of porridge.

For once, her pouchy toad’s eyes were not sweeping the Great Hall looking for misbehaving students.

She scowled as she gulped down her food, and every now and then she shot a malevolent glance up the table to where Dumbledore and McGonagall were talking so intently.

“Oh my —” said Hermione wonderingly, still staring at the newspaper.

“What now?” said Harry quickly; he was feeling jumpy.

“It’s . . . horrible,” said Hermione, looking shaken.

She folded back page ten of the newspaper and handed it back to Harry and Ron.

TRAGIC DEMISE OF MINISTRY OF MAGIC WORKER.

St. Mungo’s Hospital promised a full inquiry last night after Ministry of Magic worker Broderick Bode, 49, was discovered dead in his bed, strangled by a potted-plant.

Healers called to the scene were unable to revive Mr. Bode, who had been injured in a workplace accident some weeks prior to his death.

Healer Miriam Strout, who was in charge of Mr. Bode’s ward at the time of the incident, has been suspended on full pay and was unavailable for comment yesterday, but a spokeswizard for the hospital said in a statement, “St. Mungo’s deeply regrets the death of Mr. Bode, whose health was improving steadily prior to this tragic accident.

“We have strict guidelines on the decorations permitted on our wards, but it appears that Healer Strout, busy over the Christmas period, overlooked the dangers of the plant on Mr. Bode’s bedside table.

As his speech and mobility improved, Healer Strout encouraged Mr. Bode to look after the plant himself, unaware that it was not an innocent Flitterbloom, but a cutting of Devil’s Snare, which, when touched by the convalescent Mr. Bode, throttled him instantly.

“St. Mungo’s is as yet unable to account for the presence of the plant on the ward and asks any witch or wizard with information to come forward.”

“Bode . . .” said Ron.

“Bode. It rings a bell . . .”

“We saw him,” Hermione whispered.

“In St. Mungo’s, remember?

He was in the bed opposite Lockhart’s, just lying there, staring at the ceiling.

And we saw the Devil’s Snare arrive.

She — the Healer — said it was a Christmas present . . .”

Harry looked back at the story.

A feeling of horror was rising like bile in his throat.

“How come we didn’t recognize Devil’s Snare . . . ?

We’ve seen it before . . . we could’ve stopped this from happening . . .”

“Who expects Devil’s Snare to turn up in a hospital disguised as a potted plant?” said Ron sharply.

“It’s not our fault, whoever sent it to the bloke is to blame!

They must be a real prat, why didn’t they check what they were buying?”

“Oh come on, Ron!” said Hermione shakily.

“I don’t think anyone could put Devil’s Snare in a pot and not realize it tries to kill whoever touches it?

This — this was murder. . . .

A clever murder, as well. . . .

If the plant was sent anonymously, how’s anyone ever going to find out who did it?”

Harry was not thinking about Devil’s Snare.

He was remembering taking the lift down to the ninth level of the Ministry on the day of his hearing, and the sallow-faced man who had got in on the Atrium level.

“I met Bode,” he said slowly.

“I saw him at the Ministry with your dad . . .”

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Ron’s mouth fell open.

“I’ve heard Dad talk about him at home!

He was an Unspeakable — he worked in the Department of Mysteries!”

They looked at one another for a moment, then Hermione pulled the newspaper back toward her, closed it, glared for a moment at the pictures of the ten escaped Death Eaters on the front, then leapt to her feet.

“Where are you going?” said Ron, startled.

“To send a letter,” said Hermione, swinging her bag onto her shoulder.

“It . . . well, I don’t know whether . . . but it’s worth trying . . . and I’m the only one who can . . .”

“I hate it when she does that,” grumbled Ron as he and Harry got up from the table and made their own, slower way out of the Great Hall.

“Would it kill her to tell us what she’s up to for once?

It’d take her about ten more seconds — hey, Hagrid!”

Hagrid was standing beside the doors into the entrance hall, waiting for a crowd of Ravenclaws to pass.

He was still as heavily bruised as he had been on the day he had come back from his mission to the giants and there was a new cut right across the bridge of his nose.

“All righ’, you two?” he said, trying to muster a smile but managing only a kind of pained grimace.

“Are you okay, Hagrid?” asked Harry, following him as he lumbered after the Ravenclaws.

“Fine, fine,” said Hagrid with a feeble assumption of airiness; he waved a hand and narrowly missed concussing a frightened-looking Professor Vector, who was passing.

“Jus’ busy, yeh know, usual stuff — lessons ter prepare — couple o’ salamanders got scale rot — an’ I’m on probation,” he mumbled.

“You’re on probation?” said Ron very loudly, so that many students passing looked around curiously.

“Sorry — I mean — you’re on probation?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” said Hagrid.

“’S’no more’n I expected, ter tell yeh the truth.

Yeh migh’ not’ve picked up on it, bu’ that inspection didn’ go too well, yeh know . . . anyway,” he sighed deeply.

“Bes’ go an rub a bit more chili powder on them salamanders or their tails’ll be hangin’ off ’em next.

See yeh, Harry . . . Ron . . .”

He trudged away, out the front doors and down the stone steps into the damp grounds.

Harry watched him go, wondering how much more bad news he could stand.

The fact that Hagrid was now on probation became common knowledge within the school over the next few days, but to Harry’s indignation, hardly anybody appeared to be upset about it.

Indeed, some people, Draco Malfoy prominent among them, seemed positively gleeful.

As for the freakish death of an obscure Department of Mysteries employee in St. Mungo’s, Harry, Ron, and Hermione seemed to be the only people who knew or cared.

There was only one topic of conversation in the corridors now: the ten escaped Death Eaters, whose story had finally filtered through the school from those few people who read the newspapers.

Rumors were flying that some of the convicts had been spotted in Hogsmeade, that they were supposed to be hiding out in the Shrieking Shack and that they were going to break into Hogwarts, just as Sirius Black had done.

Those who came from Wizarding families had grown up hearing the names of these Death Eaters spoken with almost as much fear as Voldemort’s; the crimes they had committed during the days of Voldemort’s reign of terror were legendary.

There were relatives of their victims among the Hogwarts students, who now found themselves the unwilling objects of a gruesome sort of reflected fame as they walked the corridors: Susan Bones, who had an uncle, aunt, and cousins who had all died at the hands of one of the ten, said miserably during Herbology that she now had a good idea what it felt like to be Harry.

“And I don’t know how you stand it, it’s horrible,” she said bluntly, dumping far too much dragon manure on her tray of Screechsnap seedlings, causing them to wriggle and squeak in discomfort.

It was true that Harry was the subject of much renewed muttering and pointing in the corridors these days, yet he thought he detected a slight difference in the tone of the whisperers’ voices.

They sounded curious rather than hostile now, and once or twice he was sure he overheard snatches of conversation that suggested that the speakers were not satisfied with the Prophet’s version of how and why ten Death Eaters had managed to break out of Azkaban fortress.

In their confusion and fear, these doubters now seemed to be turning to the only other explanation available to them, the one that Harry and Dumbledore had been expounding since the previous year.

It was not only the students’ mood that had changed.

It was now quite common to come across two or three teachers conversing in low, urgent whispers in the corridors, breaking off their conversations the moment they saw students approaching.

“They obviously can’t talk freely in the staffroom anymore,” said Hermione in a low voice, as she, Harry, and Ron passed Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout huddled together outside the Charms classroom one day.

“Not with Umbridge there.”

“Reckon they know anything new?” said Ron, gazing back over his shoulder at the three teachers.

“If they do, we’re not going to hear about it, are we?” said Harry angrily.

“Not after Decree . . . What number are we on now?”

For new signs had appeared on the house notice boards the morning after news of the Azkaban breakout:

——— BY ORDER OF ———

The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts

Teachers are hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-six.

Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge

High Inquisitor

This latest decree had been the subject of a great number of jokes among the students.

Lee Jordan had pointed out to Umbridge that by the terms of the new rule she was not allowed to tell Fred and George off for playing Exploding Snap in the back of the class.

“Exploding Snap’s got nothing to do with Defense Against the Dark Arts, Professor! That’s not information relating to your subject!”

When Harry next saw Lee, the back of his hand was bleeding rather badly.

Harry recommended essence of murtlap.

Harry had thought that the breakout from Azkaban might have humbled Umbridge a little, that she might have been abashed at the catastrophe that had occurred right under her beloved Fudge’s nose.

It seemed, however, to have only intensified her furious desire to bring every aspect of life at Hogwarts under her personal control.

She seemed determined at the very least to achieve a sacking before long, and the only question was whether it would be Professor Trelawney or Hagrid who went first.

Every single Divination and Care of Magical Creatures lesson was now conducted in the presence of Umbridge and her clipboard.

She lurked by the fire in the heavily perfumed tower room, interrupting Professor Trelawney’s increasingly hysterical talks with difficult questions about Ornithomancy and Heptomology, insisting that she predict students’ answers before they gave them and demanding that she demonstrate her skill at the crystal ball, the tea leaves, and the rune stones in turn.

Harry thought that Professor Trelawney might soon crack under the strain; several times he passed her in the corridors (in itself a very unusual occurrence as she generally remained in her tower room), muttering wildly to herself, wringing her hands, and shooting terrified glances over her shoulder, all the time giving off a powerful smell of cooking sherry.

If he had not been so worried about Hagrid, he would have felt sorry for her — but if one of them was to be ousted out of a job, there could be only one choice for Harry as to who should remain.

Unfortunately, Harry could not see that Hagrid was putting up a better show than Trelawney.

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Though he seemed to be following Hermione’s advice and had shown them nothing more frightening than a crup, a creature indistinguishable from a Jack Russell terrier except for its forked tail, since before Christmas, he also seemed to have lost his nerve.

He was oddly distracted and jumpy in lessons, losing the thread of what he was saying while talking to the class, answering questions wrongly and glancing anxiously at Umbridge all the time.

He was also more distant with Harry, Ron, and Hermione than he had ever been before, expressly forbidding them to visit him after dark.

“If she catches yeh, it’ll be all of our necks on the line,” he told them flatly, and with no desire to do anything that jeopardized his job further, they abstained from walking down to his hut in the evenings.

It seemed to Harry that Umbridge was steadily depriving him of everything that made his life at Hogwarts worth living: visits to Hagrid’s house, letters from Sirius, his Firebolt, and Quidditch.

He took his revenge the only way he had: redoubling his efforts for the D.A.

Harry was pleased to see that all of them, even Zacharias Smith, had been spurred to work harder than ever by the news that ten more Death Eaters were now on the loose, but in nobody was this improvement more pronounced than in Neville.

The news of his parents’ attacker’s escape had wrought a strange and even slightly alarming change in him.

He had not once mentioned his meeting with Harry, Ron, and Hermione on the closed ward in St. Mungo’s, and taking their lead from him, they had kept quiet about it too.

Nor had he said anything on the subject of Bellatrix and her fellow torturers’ escape; in fact, he barely spoke during D.A. meetings anymore, but worked relentlessly on every new jinx and countercurse Harry taught them, his plump face screwed up in concentration, apparently indifferent to injuries or accidents, working harder than anyone else in the room.

He was improving so fast it was quite unnerving and when Harry taught them the Shield Charm, a means of deflecting minor jinxes so that they rebounded upon the attacker, only Hermione mastered the charm faster than Neville.

In fact, Harry would have given a great deal to be making as much progress at Occlumency as Neville was making during D.A. meetings.

Harry’s sessions with Snape, which had started badly enough, were not improving; on the contrary, Harry felt he was getting worse with every lesson.

Before he had started studying Occlumency, his scar had prickled occasionally, usually during the night, or else following one of those strange flashes of Voldemort’s thoughts or moods that he experienced every now and then.

Nowadays, however, his scar hardly ever stopped prickling, and he often felt lurches of annoyance or cheerfulness that were unrelated to what was happening to him at the time, which were always accompanied by a particularly painful twinge from his scar.

He had the horrible impression that he was slowly turning into a kind of aerial that was tuned in to tiny fluctuations in Voldemort’s mood, and he was sure he could date this increased sensitivity firmly from his first Occlumency lesson with Snape.

What was more, he was now dreaming about walking down the corridor toward the entrance to the Department of Mysteries almost every night, dreams that always culminated in him standing longingly in front of the plain black door.

“Maybe it’s a bit like an illness,” said Hermione, looking concerned when Harry confided in her and Ron.

“A fever or something. It has to get worse before it gets better.”

“It’s lessons with Snape that are making it worse,” said Harry flatly.

“I’m getting sick of my scar hurting, and I’m getting bored walking down that corridor every night.”

He rubbed his forehead angrily.

“I just wish the door would open, I’m sick of standing staring at it —”

“That’s not funny,” said Hermione sharply.

“Dumbledore doesn’t want you to have dreams about that corridor at all, or he wouldn’t have asked Snape to teach you Occlumency. You’re just going to have to work a bit harder in your lessons.”

“I am working!” said Harry, nettled.

“You try it sometime, Snape trying to get inside your head, it’s not a bundle of laughs, you know!”

“Maybe . . .” said Ron slowly.

“Maybe what?” said Hermione rather snappishly.

“Maybe it’s not Harry’s fault he can’t close his mind,” said Ron darkly.

“What do you mean?” said Hermione.

“Well, maybe Snape isn’t really trying to help Harry . . .”

Harry and Hermione stared at him.

Ron looked darkly and meaningfully from one to the other.

“Maybe,” he said again in a lower voice, “he’s actually trying to open Harry’s mind a bit wider . . . make it easier for You-Know —”

“Shut up, Ron,” said Hermione angrily.

“How many times have you suspected Snape, and when have you ever been right? Dumbledore trusts him, he works for the Order, that ought to be enough.”

“He used to be a Death Eater,” said Ron stubbornly.

“And we’ve never seen proof that he really swapped sides . . .”

“Dumbledore trusts him,” Hermione repeated.

“And if we can’t trust Dumbledore, we can’t trust anyone.”

With so much to worry about and so much to do — startling amounts of homework that frequently kept the fifth years working until past midnight, secret D.A. meetings, and regular classes with Snape — January seemed to be passing alarmingly fast.

Before Harry knew it, February had arrived, bringing with it wetter and warmer weather and the prospect of the second Hogsmeade visit of the year.

Harry had had very little time to spare on conversations with Cho since they had agreed to visit the village together, but suddenly found himself facing a Valentine’s Day spent entirely in her company.

On the morning of the fourteenth he dressed particularly carefully.

He and Ron arrived at breakfast just in time for the arrival of the post owls.

Hedwig was not there — not that he had expected her — but Hermione was tugging a letter from the beak of an unfamiliar brown owl as they sat down.

“And about time! If it hadn’t come today . . .” she said eagerly, tearing open the envelope and pulling out a small piece of parchment.

Her eyes sped from left to right as she read through the message and a grimly pleased expression spread across her face.

“Listen, Harry,” she said, looking up at him. “This is really important. . . . Do you think you could meet me in the Three Broomsticks around midday?”

“Well . . . I dunno,” said Harry dubiously. “Cho might be expecting me to spend the whole day with her. We never said what we were going to do.”

“Well, bring her along if you must,” said Hermione urgently. “But will you come?”

“Well . . . all right, but why?”

“I haven’t got time to tell you now, I’ve got to answer this quickly —”

And she hurried out of the Great Hall, the letter clutched in one hand and a piece of uneaten toast in the other.

“Are you coming?” Harry asked Ron, but he shook his head, looking glum.

“I can’t come into Hogsmeade at all, Angelina wants a full day’s training. Like it’s going to help — we’re the worst team I’ve ever seen. You should see Sloper and Kirke, they’re pathetic, even worse than I am.”

He heaved a great sigh.

“I dunno why Angelina won’t just let me resign . . .”

“It’s because you’re good when you’re on form, that’s why,” said Harry irritably.

He found it very hard to be sympathetic to Ron’s plight when he himself would have given almost anything to be playing in the forthcoming match against Hufflepuff.

Ron seemed to notice Harry’s tone, because he did not mention Quidditch again during breakfast, and there was a slight frostiness in the way they said good-bye to each other shortly afterward.

Ron departed for the Quidditch pitch and Harry, after attempting to flatten his hair while staring at his reflection in the back of a teaspoon, proceeded alone to the entrance hall to meet Cho, feeling very apprehensive and wondering what on earth they were going to talk about.

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She was waiting for him a little to the side of the oak front doors, looking very pretty with her hair tied back in a long ponytail.

Harry’s feet seemed to be too big for his body as he walked toward her, and he was suddenly horribly aware of his arms and how stupid they looked swinging at his sides.

“Hi,” said Cho slightly breathlessly.

“Hi,” said Harry.

They stared at each other for a moment, then Harry said, “Well — er — shall we go, then?”

“Oh — yes . . .”

They joined the queue of people being signed out by Filch, occasionally catching each other’s eye and grinning shiftily, but not talking to each other.

Harry was relieved when they reached the fresh air, finding it easier to walk along in silence than just stand there looking awkward.

It was a fresh, breezy sort of day and as they passed the Quidditch stadium, Harry glimpsed Ron and Ginny skimming over the stands and felt a horrible pang that he was not up there with them. . . .

“You really miss it, don’t you?” said Cho.

He looked around and saw her watching him.

“Yeah,” sighed Harry. “I do.”

“Remember the first time we played against each other?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” said Harry, grinning. “You kept blocking me.”

“And Wood told you not to be a gentleman and knock me off my broom if you had to,” said Cho, smiling reminiscently. “I heard he got taken on by Pride of Portree, is that right?”

“Nah, it was Puddlemere United, I saw him at the World Cup last year.”

“Oh, I saw you there too, remember? We were on the same campsite. It was really good, wasn’t it?”

The subject of the Quidditch World Cup carried them all the way down the drive and out through the gates.

Harry could hardly believe how easy it was to talk to her, no more difficult, in fact, than talking to Ron and Hermione, and he was just starting to feel confident and cheerful when a large gang of Slytherin girls passed them, including Pansy Parkinson.

“Potter and Chang!” screeched Pansy to a chorus of snide giggles.

“Urgh, Chang, I don’t think much of your taste. . . . At least Diggory was good-looking!”

They sped up, talking and shrieking in a pointed fashion with many exaggerated glances back at Harry and Cho, leaving an embarrassed silence in their wake.

Harry could think of nothing else to say about Quidditch, and Cho, slightly flushed, was watching her feet.

“So . . . where d’you want to go?” Harry asked as they entered Hogsmeade.

The High Street was full of students ambling up and down, peering into the shop windows and messing about together on the pavements.

“Oh . . . I don’t mind,” said Cho, shrugging. “Um . . . shall we just have a look in the shops or something?”

They wandered toward Dervish and Banges.

A large poster had been stuck up in the window and a few Hogsmeaders were looking at it.

They moved aside when Harry and Cho approached and Harry found himself staring once more at the ten pictures of the escaped Death Eaters.

The poster (“By Order of the Ministry of Magic”) offered a thousand-Galleon reward to any witch or wizard with information relating to the recapture of any of the convicts pictured.

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” said Cho in a low voice, also gazing up at the pictures of the Death Eaters.

“Remember when that Sirius Black escaped, and there were dementors all over Hogsmeade looking for him? And now ten Death Eaters are on the loose and there aren’t dementors anywhere . . .”

“Yeah,” said Harry, tearing his eyes away from Bellatrix Lestrange’s face to glance up and down the High Street.

“Yeah, it is weird . . .”

He was not sorry that there were no dementors nearby, but now he came to think of it, their absence was highly significant.

They had not only let the Death Eaters escape, they were not bothering to look for them. . . .

It looked as though they really were outside Ministry control now.

The ten escaped Death Eaters were staring out of every shop window he and Cho passed.

It started to rain as they passed Scrivenshaft’s; cold, heavy drops of water kept hitting Harry’s face and the back of his neck.

“Um . . . d’you want to get a coffee?” said Cho tentatively, as the rain began to fall more heavily.

“Yeah, all right,” said Harry, looking around.

“Where — ?”

“Oh, there’s a really nice place just up here, haven’t you ever been to Madam Puddifoot’s?” she said brightly, and she led him up a side road and into a small tea shop that Harry had never noticed before.

It was a cramped, steamy little place where everything seemed to have been decorated with frills or bows.

Harry was reminded unpleasantly of Umbridge’s office.

“Cute, isn’t it?” said Cho happily.

“Er . . . yeah,” said Harry untruthfully.

“Look, she’s decorated it for Valentine’s Day!” said Cho, indicating a number of golden cherubs that were hovering over each of the small, circular tables, occasionally throwing pink confetti over the occupants.

“Aaah . . .”

They sat down at the last remaining table, which was situated in the steamy window.

Roger Davies, the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain, was sitting about a foot and a half away with a pretty blonde girl.

They were holding hands.

The sight made Harry feel uncomfortable, particularly when, looking around the tea shop, he saw that it was full of nothing but couples, all of them holding hands.

Perhaps Cho would expect him to hold her hand.

“What can I get you, m’dears?” said Madam Puddifoot, a very stout woman with a shiny black bun, squeezing between their table and Roger Davies’s with great difficulty.

“Two coffees, please,” said Cho.

In the time it took for their coffees to arrive, Roger Davies and his girlfriend started kissing over their sugar bowl.

Harry wished they wouldn’t; he felt that Davies was setting a standard with which Cho would soon expect him to compete.

He felt his face growing hot and tried staring out of the window, but it was so steamed up he could not see the street outside.

To postpone the moment when he had to look at Cho he stared up at the ceiling as though examining the paintwork and received a handful of confetti in the face from their hovering cherub.

After a few more painful minutes Cho mentioned Umbridge; Harry seized on the subject with relief and they passed a few happy moments abusing her, but the subject had already been so thoroughly canvassed during D.A. meetings it did not last very long.

Silence fell again.

Harry was very conscious of the slurping noises coming from the table next door and cast wildly around for something else to say.

“Er . . . listen, d’you want to come with me to the Three Broomsticks at lunchtime? I’m meeting Hermione Granger there.”

Cho raised her eyebrows.

“You’re meeting Hermione Granger? Today?”

“Yeah. Well, she asked me to, so I thought I would. D’you want to come with me? She said it wouldn’t matter if you did.”

“Oh . . . well . . . that was nice of her.”

But Cho did not sound as though she thought it was nice at all; on the contrary, her tone was cold and all of a sudden she looked rather forbidding.

A few more minutes passed in total silence, Harry drinking his coffee so fast that he would soon need a fresh cup.

Next door, Roger Davies and his girlfriend seemed glued together by the lips.

Cho’s hand was lying on the table beside her coffee, and Harry was feeling a mounting pressure to take hold of it.

Just do it, he told himself, as a fount of mingled panic and excitement surged up inside his chest.

Just reach out and grab it. . . .

Amazing how much more difficult it was to extend his arm twelve inches and touch her hand than to snatch a speeding Snitch from midair . . .

But just as he moved his hand forward, Cho took hers off the table.

She was now watching Roger Davies kissing his girlfriend with a mildly interested expression.

“He asked me out, you know,” she said in a quiet voice.

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“A couple of weeks ago. Roger. I turned him down, though.”

Harry, who had grabbed the sugar bowl to excuse his sudden lunging movement across the table, could not think why she was telling him this.

If she wished she were sitting at the table next door being heartily kissed by Roger Davies, why had she agreed to come out with him?

He said nothing.

Their cherub threw another handful of confetti over them; some of it landed in the last cold dregs of coffee Harry had been about to drink.

“I came in here with Cedric last year,” said Cho.

In the second or so it took for him to take in what she had said, Harry’s insides had become glacial.

He could not believe she wanted to talk about Cedric now, while kissing couples surrounded them and a cherub floated over their heads.

Cho’s voice was rather higher when she spoke again.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages. . . . Did Cedric — did he m-m-mention me at all before he died?”

This was the very last subject on earth Harry wanted to discuss, and least of all with Cho.

“Well — no —” he said quietly.

“There — there wasn’t time for him to say anything. Erm . . . so . . . d’you . . . d’you get to see a lot of Quidditch in the holidays? You support the Tornados, right?”

His voice sounded falsely bright and cheery.

To his horror, he saw that her eyes were swimming with tears again, just as they had been after the last D.A. meeting before Christmas.

“Look,” he said desperately, leaning in so that nobody else could overhear, “let’s not talk about Cedric right now. . . . Let’s talk about something else . . .”

But this, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say.

“I thought,” she said, tears spattering down onto the table.

“I thought you’d u-u-understand! I need to talk about it! Surely you n-need to talk about it t-too! I mean, you saw it happen, d-didn’t you?”

Everything was going nightmarishly wrong; Roger Davies’ girlfriend had even unglued herself to look around at Cho crying.

“Well — I have talked about it,” Harry said in a whisper, “to Ron and Hermione, but —”

“Oh, you’ll talk to Hermione Granger!” she said shrilly, her face now shining with tears, and several more kissing couples broke apart to stare.

“But you won’t talk to me! P-perhaps it would be best if we just . . . just p-paid and you went and met up with Hermione G-Granger, like you obviously want to!”

Harry stared at her, utterly bewildered, as she seized a frilly napkin and dabbed at her shining face with it.

“Cho?” he said weakly, wishing Roger would seize his girlfriend and start kissing her again to stop her goggling at him and Cho.

“Go on, leave!” she said, now crying into the napkin.

“I don’t know why you asked me out in the first place if you’re going to make arrangements to meet other girls right after me. . . . How many are you meeting after Hermione?”

“It’s not like that!” said Harry, and he was so relieved at finally understanding what she was annoyed about that he laughed, which he realized a split second too late was a mistake.

Cho sprang to her feet.

The whole tearoom was quiet, and everybody was watching them now.

“I’ll see you around, Harry,” she said dramatically, and hiccuping slightly she dashed to the door, wrenched it open, and hurried off into the pouring rain.

“Cho!” Harry called after her, but the door had already swung shut behind her with a tuneful tinkle.

There was total silence within the tea shop.

Every eye was upon Harry.

He threw a Galleon down onto the table, shook pink confetti out of his eyes, and followed Cho out of the door.

It was raining hard now, and she was nowhere to be seen.

He simply did not understand what had happened; half an hour ago they had been getting along fine.

“Women!” he muttered angrily, sloshing down the rain-washed street with his hands in his pockets.

“What did she want to talk about Cedric for anyway? Why does she always want to drag up a subject that makes her act like a human hosepipe?”

He turned right and broke into a splashy run, and within minutes he was turning into the doorway of the Three Broomsticks.

He knew he was too early to meet Hermione, but he thought it likely there would be someone in here with whom he could spend the intervening time.

He shook his wet hair out of his eyes and looked around.

Hagrid was sitting alone in a corner, looking morose.

“Hi, Hagrid!” he said, when he had squeezed through the crammed tables and pulled up a chair beside him.

Hagrid jumped and looked down at Harry as though he barely recognized him.

Harry saw that he had two fresh cuts on his face and several new bruises.

“Oh, it’s you, Harry,” said Hagrid.

“You all righ’?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” lied Harry; in fact, next to this battered and mournful-looking Hagrid, he felt he did not have much to complain about.

“Er — are you okay?”

“Me?” said Hagrid.

“Oh yeah, I’m grand, Harry, grand . . .”

He gazed into the depths of his pewter tankard, which was the size of a large bucket, and sighed.

Harry did not know what to say to him.

They sat side by side in silence for a moment.

Then Hagrid said abruptly, “In the same boat, you an’ me, aren’ we, Harry?”

“Er —” said Harry.

“Yeah . . . I’ve said it before. . . . Both outsiders, like,” said Hagrid, nodding wisely.

“An’ both orphans. Yeah . . . both orphans.”

He took a great swig from his tankard.

“Makes a diff’rence, havin’ a decent family,” he said.

“Me dad was decent. An’ your mum an’ dad were decent. If they’d lived, life woulda bin diff’rent, eh?”

“Yeah . . . I s’pose,” said Harry cautiously.

Hagrid seemed to be in a very strange mood.

“Family,” said Hagrid gloomily.

“Whatever yeh say, blood’s important . . .”

And he wiped a trickle of it out of his eye.

“Hagrid,” said Harry, unable to stop himself, “where are you getting all these injuries?”

“Eh?” said Hagrid, looking startled.

“Wha’ injuries?”

“All those!” said Harry, pointing at Hagrid’s face.

“Oh . . . tha’s jus’ normal bumps an’ bruises, Harry,” said Hagrid dismissively.

“I got a rough job.”

He drained his tankard, set it back upon the table, and got to his feet.

“I’ll be seein’ yeh, Harry. . . . Take care now . . .”

And he lumbered out of the pub looking wretched and then disappeared into the torrential rain.

Harry watched him go, feeling miserable.

Hagrid was unhappy and he was hiding something, but he seemed determined not to accept help.

What was going on?

But before Harry could think about the matter any further, he heard a voice calling his name.

“Harry! Harry, over here!”

Hermione was waving at him from the other side of the room.

He got up and made his way toward her through the crowded pub.

He was still a few tables away when he realized that Hermione was not alone; she was sitting at a table with the unlikeliest pair of drinking mates he could ever have imagined: Luna Lovegood and none other than Rita Skeeter, ex-journalist on the Daily Prophet and one of Hermione’s least favorite people in the world.

“You’re early!” said Hermione, moving along to give him room to sit down.

“I thought you were with Cho, I wasn’t expecting you for another hour at least!”

“Cho?” said Rita at once, twisting around in her seat to stare avidly at Harry.

“A girl?”

She snatched up her crocodile-skin handbag and groped within it.

“It’s none of your business if Harry’s been with a hundred girls,” Hermione told Rita coolly.

“So you can put that away right now.”

Rita had been on the point of withdrawing an acid-green quill from her bag.

Looking as though she had been forced to swallow Stinksap, she snapped her bag shut again.

“What are you up to?” Harry asked, sitting down and staring from Rita to Luna to Hermione.

“Little Miss Perfect was just about to tell me when you arrived,” said Rita, taking a large slurp of her drink.

“I suppose I’m allowed to talk to him, am I?” she shot at Hermione.

“Yes, I suppose you are,” said Hermione coldly.

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Unemployment did not suit Rita.

The hair that had once been set in elaborate curls now hung lank and unkempt around her face.

The scarlet paint on her two-inch talons was chipped and there were a couple of false jewels missing from her winged glasses.

She took another great gulp of her drink and said out of the corner of her mouth, “Pretty girl, is she, Harry?”

“One more word about Harry’s love life and the deal’s off and that’s a promise,” said Hermione irritably.

“What deal?” said Rita, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“You haven’t mentioned a deal yet, Miss Prissy, you just told me to turn up. Oh, one of these days . . .” She took a deep shuddering breath.

“Yes, yes, one of these days you’ll write more horrible stories about Harry and me,” said Hermione indifferently.

“Find someone who cares, why don’t you?”

“They’ve run plenty of horrible stories about Harry this year without my help,” said Rita, shooting a sideways look at him over the top of her glass and adding in a rough whisper, “How has that made you feel, Harry? Betrayed? Distraught? Misunderstood?”

“He feels angry, of course,” said Hermione in a hard, clear voice.

“Because he’s told the Minister of Magic the truth and the Minister’s too much of an idiot to believe him.”

“So you actually stick to it, do you, that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back?” said Rita, lowering her glass and subjecting Harry to a piercing stare while her finger strayed longingly to the clasp of the crocodile bag.

“You stand by all this garbage Dumbledore’s been telling everybody about You-Know-Who returning and you being the sole witness — ?”

“I wasn’t the sole witness,” snarled Harry.

“There were a dozen-odd Death Eaters there as well. Want their names?”

“I’d love them,” breathed Rita, now fumbling in her bag once more and gazing at him as though he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“A great bold headline: ‘Potter Accuses . . .’ A subheading: ‘Harry Potter Names Death Eaters Still Among Us.’ And then, beneath a nice big photograph of you: ‘Disturbed teenage survivor of You-Know-Who’s attack, Harry Potter, 15, caused outrage yesterday by accusing respectable and prominent members of the Wizarding community of being Death Eaters . . .’”

The Quick-Quotes Quill was actually in her hand and halfway to her mouth when the rapturous expression died out of her face.

“But of course,” she said, lowering the quill and looking daggers at Hermione.

“Little Miss Perfect wouldn’t want that story out there, would she?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Hermione sweetly, “that’s exactly what Little Miss Perfect does want.”

Rita stared at her.

So did Harry.

Luna, on the other hand, sang, “Weasley Is Our King” dreamily under her breath and stirred her drink with a cocktail onion on a stick.

“You want me to report what he says about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?” Rita asked Hermione in a hushed voice.

“Yes, I do,” said Hermione.

“The true story. All the facts. Exactly as Harry reports them. He’ll give you all the details, he’ll tell you the names of the undiscovered Death Eaters he saw there, he’ll tell you what Voldemort looks like now — oh, get a grip on yourself,” she added contemptuously, throwing a napkin across the table, for at the sound of Voldemort’s name, Rita had jumped so badly that she had slopped half her glass of firewhisky down herself.

Rita blotted the front of her grubby raincoat, still staring at Hermione.

Then she said baldly, “The Prophet wouldn’t print it. In case you haven’t noticed, nobody believes his cock-and-bull story. Everyone thinks he’s delusional. Now, if you let me write the story from that angle —”

“We don’t need another story about how Harry’s lost his marbles!” said Hermione angrily.

“We’ve had plenty of those already, thank you! I want him given the opportunity to tell the truth!”

“There’s no market for a story like that,” said Rita coldly.

“You mean the Prophet won’t print it because Fudge won’t let them,” said Hermione irritably.

Rita gave Hermione a long, hard look.

Then, leaning forward across the table toward her, she said in a businesslike tone, “All right, Fudge is leaning on the Prophet, but it comes to the same thing. They won’t print a story that shows Harry in a good light. Nobody wants to read it. It’s against the public mood. This last Azkaban breakout has got people quite worried enough. People just don’t want to believe You-Know-Who’s back.”

“So the Daily Prophet exists to tell people what they want to hear, does it?” said Hermione scathingly.

Rita sat up straight again, her eyebrows raised, and drained her glass of firewhisky.

“The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl,” she said coldly.

“My dad thinks it’s an awful paper,” said Luna, chipping into the conversation unexpectedly.

Sucking on her cocktail onion, she gazed at Rita with her enormous, protuberant, slightly mad eyes.

“He publishes important stories that he thinks the public needs to know. He doesn’t care about making money.”

Rita looked disparagingly at Luna.

“I’m guessing your father runs some stupid little village newsletter?” she said.

“‘Twenty-five Ways to Mingle with Muggles’ and the dates of the next Bring-and-Fly Sale?”

“No,” said Luna, dipping her onion back into her gillywater.

“He’s the editor of The Quibbler.”

Rita snorted so loudly that people at a nearby table looked around in alarm.

“‘Important stories he thinks the public needs to know’?” she said witheringly.

“I could manure my garden with the contents of that rag.”

“Well, this is your chance to raise the tone of it a bit, isn’t it?” said Hermione pleasantly.

“Luna says her father’s quite happy to take Harry’s interview. That’s who’ll be publishing it.”

Rita stared at them both for a moment and then let out a great whoop of laughter.

“The Quibbler!” she said, cackling.

“You think people will take him seriously if he’s published in The Quibbler?”

“Some people won’t,” said Hermione in a level voice.

“But the Daily Prophet’s version of the Azkaban breakout had some gaping holes in it. I think a lot of people will be wondering whether there isn’t a better explanation of what happened, and if there’s an alternative story available, even if it is published in a” — she glanced sideways at Luna, “in a — well, an unusual magazine — I think they might be rather keen to read it.”

Rita did not say anything for a while, but eyed Hermione shrewdly, her head a little to one side.

“All right, let’s say for a moment I’ll do it,” she said abruptly.

“What kind of fee am I going to get?”

“I don’t think Daddy exactly pays people to write for the magazine,” said Luna dreamily.

“They do it because it’s an honor, and, of course, to see their names in print.”

Rita Skeeter looked as though the taste of Stinksap was strong in her mouth again as she rounded on Hermione.

“I’m supposed to do this for free?”

“Well, yes,” said Hermione calmly, taking a sip of her drink.

“Otherwise, as you very well know, I will inform the authorities that you are an unregistered Animagus. Of course, the Prophet might give you rather a lot for an insider’s account of life in Azkaban . . .”

Rita looked as though she would have liked nothing better than to seize the paper umbrella sticking out of Hermione’s drink and thrust it up her nose.

“I don’t suppose I’ve got any choice, have I?” said Rita, her voice shaking slightly.

She opened her crocodile bag once more, withdrew a piece of parchment, and raised her Quick-Quotes Quill.

“Daddy will be pleased,” said Luna brightly.

A muscle twitched in Rita’s jaw.

“Okay, Harry?” said Hermione, turning to him.

“Ready to tell the public the truth?”

“I suppose,” said Harry, watching Rita balancing the Quick-Quotes Quill at the ready on the parchment between them.

“Fire away, then, Rita,” said Hermione serenely, fishing a cherry out of the bottom of her glass.

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CHAPTER XXVI. SEEN AND UNFORESEEN

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Luna said vaguely that she did not know how soon Rita’s interview with Harry would appear in The Quibbler.

That her father was expecting a lovely long article on recent sightings of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.

“And, of course, that’ll be a very important story, so Harry’s might have to wait for the following issue,” said Luna.

Harry had not found it an easy experience to talk about the night when Voldemort had returned.

Rita had pressed him for every little detail, and he had given her everything he could remember, knowing that this was his one big opportunity to tell the world the truth.

He wondered how people would react to the story.

He guessed that it would confirm a lot of people in the view that he was completely insane, not least because his story would be appearing alongside utter rubbish about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.

But the breakout of Bellatrix Lestrange and her fellow Death Eaters had given Harry a burning desire to do something, whether it worked or not.

“Can’t wait to see what Umbridge thinks of you going public,” said Dean, sounding awestruck at dinner on Monday night.

Seamus was shoveling down large amounts of chicken-and-ham pie on Dean’s other side, but Harry knew he was listening.

“It’s the right thing to do, Harry,” said Neville, who was sitting opposite him.

He was rather pale, but went on in a low voice, “It must have been... tough... talking about it...”

“Yeah,” mumbled Harry, “but people have got to know what Voldemort’s capable of, haven’t they?”

“That’s right,” said Neville, nodding, “and his Death Eaters too... People should know...”

Neville left his sentence hanging and returned to his baked potato.

Seamus looked up, but when he caught Harry’s eye he looked quickly back at his plate again.

After a while Dean, Seamus, and Neville departed for the common room, leaving Harry and Hermione at the table waiting for Ron, who had not yet had dinner because of Quidditch practice.

Cho Chang walked into the hall with her friend Marietta.

Harry’s stomach gave an unpleasant lurch, but she did not look over at the Gryffindor table and sat down with her back to him.

“Oh, I forgot to ask you,” said Hermione brightly, glancing over at the Ravenclaw table, “what happened on your date with Cho?

How come you were back so early?”

“Er... well, it was...” said Harry, pulling a dish of rhubarb crumble toward him and helping himself to seconds, “a complete fiasco, now you mention it.”

And he told her what had happened in Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop.

“So then,” he finished several minutes later, as the final bit of crumble disappeared, “she jumps up, right, and says ‘I’ll see you around, Harry,’ and runs out of the place!”

He put down his spoon and looked at Hermione.

“I mean, what was all that about?

What was going on?”

Hermione glanced over at the back of Cho’s head and sighed.

“Oh, Harry,” she said sadly.

“Well, I’m sorry, but you were a bit tactless.”

“Me, tactless?” said Harry, outraged.

“One minute we were getting on fine, next minute she was telling me that Roger Davies asked her out, and how she used to go and snog Cedric in that stupid tea shop — how was I supposed to feel about that?”

“Well, you see,” said Hermione, with the patient air of one explaining that one plus one equals two to an overemotional toddler, “you shouldn’t have told her that you wanted to meet me halfway through your date.”

“But, but,” spluttered Harry, “but — you told me to meet you at twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without telling her — ?”

“You should have told her differently,” said Hermione, still with that maddeningly patient air.

“You should have said it was really annoying, but I’d made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn’t want to go, you’d much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you, and hopefully you’d be able to get away more quickly?

And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am too,” Hermione added as an afterthought.

“But I don’t think you’re ugly,” said Harry, bemused.

Hermione laughed.

“Harry, you’re worse than Ron...

Well, no, you’re not,” she sighed, as Ron himself came stumping into the Hall splattered with mud and looking grumpy.

“Look — you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous.

It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her.”

“Is that what she was doing?” said Harry as Ron dropped onto the bench opposite them and pulled every dish within reach toward himself.

“Well, wouldn’t it have been easier if she’d just asked me whether I liked her better than you?”

“Girls don’t often ask questions like that,” said Hermione.

“Well, they should!” said Harry forcefully.

“Then I could’ve just told her I fancy her, and she wouldn’t have had to get herself all worked up again about Cedric dying!”

“I’m not saying what she did was sensible,” said Hermione, as Ginny joined them, just as muddy as Ron and looking equally disgruntled.

“I’m just trying to make you see how she was feeling at the time.”

“You should write a book,” Ron told Hermione as he cut up his potatoes, “translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them.”

“Yeah,” said Harry fervently, looking over at the Ravenclaw table.

Cho had just got up; still not looking at him, she left the Great Hall.

Feeling rather depressed, he looked back at Ron and Ginny.

“So, how was Quidditch practice?”

“It was a nightmare,” said Ron in a surly voice.

“Oh come on,” said Hermione, looking at Ginny, “I’m sure it wasn’t that —”

“Yes, it was,” said Ginny.

“It was appalling.

Angelina was nearly in tears by the end of it.”

Ron and Ginny went off for baths after dinner; Harry and Hermione returned to the busy Gryffindor common room and their usual pile of homework.

Harry had been struggling with a new star chart for Astronomy for half an hour when Fred and George turned up.

“Ron and Ginny not here?” asked Fred, looking around as he pulled up a chair and, when Harry shook his head, he said, “Good.

We were watching their practice.

They’re going to be slaughtered.

They’re complete rubbish without us.”

“Come on, Ginny’s not bad,” said George fairly, sitting down next to Fred.

“Actually, I dunno how she got so good, seeing how we never let her play with us...”

“She’s been breaking into your broom shed in the garden since the age of six and taking each of your brooms out in turn when you weren’t looking,” said Hermione from behind her tottering pile of Ancient Rune books.

“Oh,” said George, looking mildly impressed.

“Well — that’d explain it.”

“Has Ron saved a goal yet?” asked Hermione, peering over the top of Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms.

“Well, he can do it if he doesn’t think anyone’s watching him,” said Fred, rolling his eyes.

“So all we have to do is ask the crowd to turn their backs and talk among themselves every time the Quaffle goes up his end on Saturday.”

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He got up again and moved restlessly to the window, staring out across the dark grounds.

“You know, Quidditch was about the only thing in this place worth staying for.”

Hermione cast him a stern look.

“You’ve got exams coming!”

“Told you already, we’re not fussed about N.E.W.T.s,” said Fred.

“The Snackboxes are ready to roll, we found out how to get rid of those boils, just a couple of drops of murtlap essence sorts them, Lee put us onto it...”

George yawned widely and looked out disconsolately at the cloudy night sky.

“I dunno if I even want to watch this match.

If Zacharias Smith beats us I might have to kill myself.”

“Kill him, more like,” said Fred firmly.

“That’s the trouble with Quidditch,” said Hermione absentmindedly, once again bent over her Rune translation, “it creates all this bad feeling and tension between the Houses.”

She looked up to find her copy of Spellman’s Syllabary and caught Fred, George, and Harry looking at her with expressions of mingled disgust and incredulity on their faces.

“Well, it does!” she said impatiently.

“It’s only a game, isn’t it?”

“Hermione,” said Harry, shaking his head, “you’re good on feelings and stuff, but you just don’t understand about Quidditch.”

“Maybe not,” she said darkly, returning to her translation again, “but at least my happiness doesn’t depend on Ron’s goalkeeping ability.”

And though Harry would rather have jumped off the Astronomy Tower than admit it to her, by the time he had watched the game the following Saturday he would have given any number of Galleons not to care about Quidditch either.

The very best thing you could say about the match was that it was short; the Gryffindor spectators had to endure only twenty-two minutes of agony.

It was hard to say what the worst thing was: Harry thought it was a close-run contest between Ron’s fourteenth failed save, Sloper missing the Bludger but hitting Angelina in the mouth with his bat, and Kirke shrieking and falling backward off his broom as Zacharias Smith zoomed at him carrying the Quaffle.

The miracle was that Gryffindor only lost by ten points: Ginny managed to snatch the Snitch from right under Hufflepuff Seeker Summerby’s nose, so that the final score was two hundred and forty versus two hundred and thirty.

“Good catch,” Harry told Ginny back in the common room, where the atmosphere closely resembled that of a particularly dismal funeral.

“I was lucky,” she shrugged. “It wasn’t a very fast Snitch and Summerby’s got a cold, he sneezed and closed his eyes at exactly the wrong moment. Anyway, once you’re back on the team —”

“Ginny, I’ve got a lifelong ban.”

“You’re banned as long as Umbridge is in the school,” Ginny corrected him. “There’s a difference. Anyway, once you’re back, I think I’ll try out for Chaser. Angelina and Alicia are both leaving next year and I prefer goalscoring to Seeking anyway.”

Harry looked over at Ron, who was hunched in a corner, staring at his knees, a bottle of butterbeer clutched in his hand.

“Angelina still won’t let him resign,” Ginny said, as though reading Harry’s mind. “She says she knows he’s got it in him.”

Harry liked Angelina for the faith she was showing in Ron, but at the same time thought it would really be kinder to let him leave the team.

Ron had left the pitch to another booming chorus of “Weasley Is Our King” sung with great gusto by the Slytherins, who were now favorites to win the Quidditch Cup.

Fred and George wandered over.

“I haven’t got the heart to take the mickey out of him, even,” said Fred, looking over at Ron’s crumpled figure.

“Mind you . . . when he missed the fourteenth . . .”

He made wild motions with his arms as though doing an upright doggy-paddle.

“Well, I’ll save it for parties, eh?”

Ron dragged himself up to bed shortly after this.

Out of respect for his feelings, Harry waited a while before going up to the dormitory himself, so that Ron could pretend to be asleep if he wanted to.

Sure enough, when Harry finally entered the room Ron was snoring a little too loudly to be entirely plausible.

Harry got into bed, thinking about the match.

It had been immensely frustrating watching from the sidelines.

He was quite impressed by Ginny’s performance but he felt that if he had been playing he could have caught the Snitch sooner. . . .

There had been a moment when it had been fluttering near Kirke’s ankle; if she hadn’t hesitated, she might have been able to scrape a win for Gryffindor. . . .

Umbridge had been sitting a few rows below Harry and Hermione.

Once or twice she had turned squatly in her seat to look at him, her wide toad’s mouth stretched in what he thought had been a gloating smile.

The memory of it made him feel hot with anger as he lay there in the dark.

After a few minutes, however, he remembered that he was supposed to be emptying his mind of all emotion before he slept, as Snape kept instructing him at the end of every Occlumency lesson.

He tried for a moment or two, but the thought of Snape on top of memories of Umbridge merely increased his sense of grumbling resentment, and he found himself focusing instead on how much he loathed the pair of them.

Slowly, Ron’s snores died away, replaced by the sound of deep, slow breathing.

It took Harry much longer to get to sleep; his body was tired, but it took his brain a long time to close down.

He dreamed that Neville and Professor Sprout were waltzing around the Room of Requirement while Professor McGonagall played the bagpipes.

He watched them happily for a while, then decided to go and find the other members of the D.A . . .

But when he left the room he found himself facing, not the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, but a torch burning in its bracket on a stone wall.

He turned his head slowly to the left.

There, at the far end of the windowless passage, was a plain, black door.

He walked toward it with a sense of mounting excitement.

He had the strangest feeling that this time he was going to get lucky at last, and find the way to open it. . . .

He was feet from it and saw with a leap of excitement that there was a glowing strip of faint blue light down the right-hand side. . . .

The door was ajar. . . .

He stretched out his hand to push it wide and —

Ron gave a loud, rasping, genuine snore, and Harry awoke abruptly with his right hand stretched in front of him in the darkness, to open a door that was hundreds of miles away.

He let it fall with a feeling of mingled disappointment and guilt.

He knew he should not have seen the door, but at the same time, felt so consumed with curiosity about what was behind it that he could not help feeling annoyed with Ron. . . .

If he could have saved his snore for just another minute . . .

They entered the Great Hall for breakfast at exactly the same moment as the post owls on Monday morning.

Hermione was not the only person eagerly awaiting her Daily Prophet.

Nearly everyone was eager for more news about the escaped Death Eaters, who, despite many reported sightings, had still not been caught.

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She gave the delivery owl a Knut and unfolded the newspaper eagerly while Harry helped himself to orange juice; as he had only received one note during the entire year he was sure, when the first owl landed with a thud in front of him, that it had made a mistake.

“Who’re you after?” he asked it, languidly removing his orange juice from underneath its beak and leaning forward to see the recipient’s name and address: Harry Potter, Great Hall, Hogwarts School.

Frowning, he made to take the letter from the owl, but before he could do so, three, four, five more owls had fluttered down beside it and were jockeying for position, treading in the butter, knocking over the salt, and each attempting to give him their letters first.

“What’s going on?” Ron asked in amazement, as the whole of Gryffindor table leaned forward to watch as another seven owls landed amongst the first ones, screeching, hooting, and flapping their wings.

“Harry!” said Hermione breathlessly, plunging her hands into the feathery mass and pulling out a screech owl bearing a long, cylindrical package.

“I think I know what this means — open this one first!”

Harry ripped off the brown packaging.

Out rolled a tightly furled copy of March’s edition of The Quibbler.

He unrolled it to see his own face grinning sheepishly at him from the front cover.

In large red letters across his picture were the words: HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST: THE TRUTH ABOUT HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” said Luna, who had drifted over to the Gryffindor table and now squeezed herself onto the bench between Fred and Ron.

“It came out yesterday, I asked Dad to send you a free copy. I expect all these,” she waved a hand at the assembled owls still scrabbling around on the table in front of Harry, “are letters from readers.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Hermione eagerly, “Harry, d’you mind if we — ?”

“Help yourself,” said Harry, feeling slightly bemused.

Ron and Hermione both started ripping open envelopes.

“This one’s from a bloke who thinks you’re off your rocker,” said Ron, glancing down his letter.

“Ah well . . .”

“This woman recommends you try a good course of Shock Spells at St. Mungo’s,” said Hermione, looking disappointed and crumpling up a second.

“This one looks okay, though,” said Harry slowly, scanning a long letter from a witch in Paisley.

“Hey, she says she believes me!”

“This one’s in two minds,” said Fred, who had joined in the letter-opening with enthusiasm.

“Says you don’t come across as a mad person, but he really doesn’t want to believe You-Know-Who’s back so he doesn’t know what to think now. . . . Blimey, what a waste of parchment . . .”

“Here’s another one you’ve convinced, Harry!” said Hermione excitedly.

“‘Having read your side of the story I am forced to the conclusion that the Daily Prophet has treated you very unfairly. . . . Little though I want to think that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned, I am forced to accept that you are telling the truth . . .’ Oh this is wonderful!”

“Another one who thinks you’re barking,” said Ron, throwing a crumpled letter over his shoulder, “but this one says you’ve got her converted, and she now thinks you’re a real hero — she’s put in a photograph too — wow —”

“What is going on here?” said a falsely sweet, girlish voice.

Harry looked up with his hands full of envelopes.

Professor Umbridge was standing behind Fred and Luna, her bulging toad’s eyes scanning the mess of owls and letters on the table in front of Harry.

Behind her he saw many of the students watching them avidly.

“Why have you got all these letters, Mr. Potter?” she asked slowly.

“Is that a crime now?” said Fred loudly.

“Getting mail?”

“Be careful, Mr. Weasley, or I shall have to put you in detention,” said Umbridge.

“Well, Mr. Potter?”

Harry hesitated, but he did not see how he could keep what he had done quiet; it was surely only a matter of time before a copy of The Quibbler came to Umbridge’s attention.

“People have written to me because I gave an interview,” said Harry.

“About what happened to me last June.”

For some reason he glanced up at the staff table as he said this.

He had the strangest feeling that Dumbledore had been watching him a second before, but when he looked, Dumbledore seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Professor Flitwick.

“An interview?” repeated Umbridge, her voice thinner and higher than ever.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a reporter asked me questions and I answered them,” said Harry.

“Here —”

And he threw the copy of The Quibbler at her.

She caught it and stared down at the cover.

Her pale, doughy face turned an ugly, patchy violet.

“When did you do this?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

“Last Hogsmeade weekend,” said Harry.

She looked up at him, incandescent with rage, the magazine shaking in her stubby fingers.

“There will be no more Hogsmeade trips for you, Mr. Potter,” she whispered.

“How you dare . . . how you could . . .”

She took a deep breath.

“I have tried again and again to teach you not to tell lies.

The message, apparently, has still not sunk in.

Fifty points from Gryffindor and another week’s worth of detentions.”

She stalked away, clutching The Quibbler to her chest, the eyes of many students following her.

By mid-morning enormous signs had been put up all over the school, not just on House notice boards, but in the corridors and classrooms too.

——— BY ORDER OF ———

The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts

Any student found in possession of the magazine The Quibbler will be expelled.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven.

Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge

High Inquisitor

For some reason, every time Hermione caught sight of one of these signs she beamed with pleasure.

“What exactly are you so happy about?” Harry asked her.

“Oh Harry, don’t you see?” Hermione breathed.

“If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!”

And it seemed that Hermione was quite right.

By the end of that day, though Harry had not seen so much as a corner of The Quibbler anywhere in the school, the whole place seemed to be quoting the interview at each other.

Harry heard them whispering about it as they queued up outside classes, discussing it over lunch and in the back of lessons, while Hermione even reported that every occupant of the cubicles in the girls’ toilets had been talking about it when she nipped in there before Ancient Runes.

“And then they spotted me, and obviously they know I know you, so they were bombarding me with questions,” Hermione told Harry, her eyes shining.

“And Harry, I think they believe you, I really do, I think you’ve finally got them convinced!”

Meanwhile Professor Umbridge was stalking the school, stopping students at random and demanding that they turn out their books and pockets.

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Harry knew she was looking for copies of The Quibbler, but the students were several steps ahead of her.

The pages carrying Harry’s interview had been bewitched to resemble extracts from textbooks if anyone but themselves read it, or else wiped magically blank until they wanted to peruse it again.

Soon it seemed that every single person in the school had read it.

The teachers were, of course, forbidden from mentioning the interview by Educational Decree Number Twenty-six, but they found ways to express their feelings about it all the same.

Professor Sprout awarded Gryffindor twenty points when Harry passed her a watering can.

A beaming Professor Flitwick pressed a box of squeaking sugar mice on him at the end of Charms, said “Shh!” and hurried away.

Professor Trelawney broke into hysterical sobs during Divination and announced to the startled class, and a very disapproving Umbridge, that Harry was not going to suffer an early death after all, but would live to a ripe old age, become Minister of Magic, and have twelve children.

But what made Harry happiest was Cho catching up with him as he was hurrying along to Transfiguration the next day.

Before he knew what had happened her hand was in his and she was breathing in his ear, “I’m really, really sorry.

That interview was so brave . . . it made me cry.”

He was sorry to hear she had shed even more tears over it, but very glad they were on speaking terms again, and even more pleased when she gave him a swift kiss on the cheek and hurried off again.

And unbelievably, no sooner had he arrived outside Transfiguration than something just as good happened.

Seamus stepped out of the queue to face him.

“I just wanted to say,” he mumbled, squinting at Harry’s left knee, “I believe you.

And I’ve sent a copy of that magazine to me mam.”

If anything more was needed to complete Harry’s happiness, it was Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle’s reactions.

He saw them with their heads together later that afternoon in the library, together with a weedy-looking boy Hermione whispered was called Theodore Nott.

They looked around at Harry as he browsed the shelves for the book he needed on Partial Vanishment, and Goyle cracked his knuckles threateningly and Malfoy whispered something undoubtedly malevolent to Crabbe.

Harry knew perfectly well why they were acting like this.

He had named all of their fathers as Death Eaters.

“And the best bit is,” whispered Hermione gleefully as they left the library, “they can’t contradict you, because they can’t admit they’ve read the article!”

To cap it all, Luna told him over dinner that no copy of The Quibbler had ever sold out faster.

“Dad’s reprinting!” she told Harry, her eyes popping excitedly.

“He can’t believe it, he says people seem even more interested in this than the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks!”

Harry was a hero in the Gryffindor common room that night.

Daringly, Fred and George had put an Enlargement Charm on the front cover of The Quibbler and hung it on the wall, so that Harry’s giant head gazed down upon the proceedings, occasionally saying things like “The Ministry are morons” and “Eat dung, Umbridge” in a booming voice.

Hermione did not find this very amusing; she said it interfered with her concentration, and ended up going to bed early out of irritation.

Harry had to admit that the poster was not quite as funny after an hour or two, especially when the talking spell had started to wear off, so that it merely shouted disconnected words like “Dung” and “Umbridge” at more and more frequent intervals in a progressively higher voice.

In fact it started to make his head ache and his scar began prickling uncomfortably again.

To disappointed moans from the many people who were sitting around him, asking him to relive his interview for the umpteenth time, he announced that he too needed an early night.

The dormitory was empty when he reached it.

He rested his forehead for a moment against the cool glass of the window beside his bed; it felt soothing against his scar.

Then he undressed and got into bed, wishing his headache would go away.

He also felt slightly sick.

He rolled over onto his side, closed his eyes, and fell asleep almost at once. . . .

He was standing in a dark, curtained room lit by a single branch of candles.

His hands were clenched on the back of a chair in front of him.

They were long-fingered and white as though they had not seen sunlight for years and looked like large, pale spiders against the dark velvet of the chair.

Beyond the chair, in a pool of light cast upon the floor by the candles, knelt a man in black robes.

“I have been badly advised, it seems,” said Harry, in a high, cold voice that pulsed with anger.

“Master, I crave your pardon . . .” croaked the man kneeling on the floor.

The back of his head glimmered in the candlelight.

He seemed to be trembling.

“I do not blame you, Rookwood,” said Harry in that cold, cruel voice.

He relinquished his grip upon the chair and walked around it, closer to the man cowering upon the floor, until he stood directly over him in the darkness, looking down from a far greater height than usual.

“You are sure of your facts, Rookwood?” asked Harry.

“Yes, my Lord, yes . . . I used to work in the department after — after all . . .”

“Avery told me Bode would be able to remove it.”

“Bode could never have taken it, Master. . . .

Bode would have known he could not. . . .

Undoubtedly that is why he fought so hard against Malfoy’s Imperius Curse . . .”

“Stand up, Rookwood,” whispered Harry.

The kneeling man almost fell over in his haste to obey.

His face was pockmarked; the scars were thrown into relief by the candlelight.

He remained a little stooped when standing, as though halfway through a bow, and he darted terrified looks up at Harry’s face.

“You have done well to tell me this,” said Harry.

“Very well . . .

I have wasted months on fruitless schemes, it seems. . . .

But no matter . . .

We begin again, from now.

You have Lord Voldemort’s gratitude, Rookwood . . .”

“My Lord . . .

Yes, my Lord,” gasped Rookwood, his voice hoarse with relief.

“I shall need your help. I shall need all the information you can give me.”

“Of course, my Lord, of course . . . anything . . .”

“Very well . . . you may go. Send Avery to me.”

Rookwood scurried backward, bowing, and disappeared through a door.

Left alone in the dark room, Harry turned toward the wall.

A cracked, age-spotted mirror hung on the wall in the shadows.

Harry moved toward it.

His reflection grew larger and clearer in the darkness. . . .

A face whiter than a skull . . .

Red eyes with slits for pupils . . .

“NOOOOOOOOO!”

“What?” yelled a voice nearby.

Harry flailed around madly, became entangled in the hangings, and fell out of his bed.

For a few seconds, he did not know where he was; he was convinced that he was about to see the white, skull-like face looming at him out of the dark again.

Then Ron’s voice spoke very near to him.

“Will you stop acting like a maniac, and I can get you out of here!”

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Ron wrenched the hangings apart, and Harry stared up at him in the moonlight, as he lay flat on his back, his scar searing with pain.

Ron looked as though he had just been getting ready for bed; one arm was out of his robes.

“Has someone been attacked again?” asked Ron, pulling Harry roughly to his feet.

“Is it Dad? Is it that snake?”

“No — everyone’s fine —” gasped Harry, whose forehead felt as though it was on fire again.

“Well . . . Avery isn’t. . . . He’s in trouble. . . . He gave him the wrong information. . . . He’s really angry . . .”

Harry groaned and sank, shaking, onto his bed, rubbing his scar.

“But Rookwood’s going to help him now. . . . He’s on the right track again . . .”

“What are you talking about?” said Ron, sounding scared.

“D’you mean . . . did you just see You-Know-Who?”

“I was You-Know-Who,” said Harry, and he stretched out his hands in the darkness and held them up to his face to check that they were no longer deathly white and long-fingered.

“He was with Rookwood, he’s one of the Death Eaters who escaped from Azkaban, remember? Rookwood’s just told him Bode couldn’t have done it . . .”

“Done what?”

“Remove something. . . . He said Bode would have known he couldn’t have done it. . . . Bode was under the Imperius Curse. . . . I think he said Malfoy’s dad put it on him . . .”

“Bode was bewitched to remove something?” Ron said.

“But — Harry, that’s got to be —”

“The weapon,” Harry finished the sentence for him.

“I know.”

The dormitory door opened; Dean and Seamus came in.

Harry swung his legs back into bed.

He did not want to look as though anything odd had just happened, seeing as Seamus had only just stopped thinking Harry was a nutter.

“Did you say,” murmured Ron, putting his head close to Harry’s on the pretense of helping himself to water from the jug on his bedside table, “that you were You-Know-Who?”

“Yeah,” said Harry quietly.

Ron took an unnecessarily large gulp of water.

Harry saw it spill over his chin onto his chest.

“Harry,” he said, as Dean and Seamus clattered around noisily, pulling off their robes, and talking, “you’ve got to tell —”

“I haven’t got to tell anyone,” said Harry shortly.

“I wouldn’t have seen it at all if I could do Occlumency. I’m supposed to have learned to shut this stuff out. That’s what they want.”

By “they” he meant Dumbledore.

He got back into bed and rolled over onto his side with his back to Ron.

After a while, he heard Ron’s mattress creak as he lay back down too.

His scar began to burn; he bit hard on his pillow to stop himself making a noise.

Somewhere, he knew, Avery was being punished. . . .

Harry and Ron waited until break next morning to tell Hermione exactly what had happened.

They wanted to be absolutely sure they could not be overheard.

Standing in their usual corner of the cool and breezy courtyard, Harry told her every detail of the dream he could remember.

When he had finished, she said nothing at all for a few moments, but stared with a kind of painful intensity at Fred and George, who were both headless and selling their magical hats from under their cloaks on the other side of the yard.

“So that’s why they killed him,” she said quietly, withdrawing her gaze from Fred and George at last.

“When Bode tried to steal this weapon, something funny happened to him.

I think there must be defensive spells on it, or around it, to stop people from touching it.

That’s why he was in St. Mungo’s, his brain had gone all funny and he couldn’t talk.

But remember what the Healer told us?

He was recovering.

And they couldn’t risk him getting better, could they?

I mean, the shock of whatever happened when he touched that weapon probably made the Imperius Curse lift.

Once he’d got his voice back, he’d explain what he’d been doing, wouldn’t he?

They would have known he’d been sent to steal the weapon.

Of course, it would have been easy for Lucius Malfoy to put the curse on him.

Never out of the Ministry, is he?”

“He was even hanging around that day I had my hearing,” said Harry.

“In the — hang on . . .” he said slowly.

“He was in the Department of Mysteries corridor that day!

Your dad said he was probably trying to sneak down and find out what happened in my hearing, but what if —”

“Sturgis,” gasped Hermione, looking thunderstruck.

“Sorry?” said Ron, looking bewildered.

“Sturgis Podmore,” said Hermione, breathlessly.

“Arrested for trying to get through a door.

Lucius Malfoy got him too.

I bet he did it the day you saw him there, Harry.

Sturgis had Moody’s Invisibility Cloak, right?

So what if he was standing guard by the door, invisible, and Malfoy heard him move, or guessed he was there, or just did the Imperius Curse on the off chance that a guard was there?

So when Sturgis next had an opportunity — probably when it was his turn on guard duty again — he tried to get into the department to steal the weapon for Voldemort — Ron, be quiet — but he got caught and sent to Azkaban . . .”

She gazed at Harry.

“And now Rookwood’s told Voldemort how to get the weapon?”

“I didn’t hear all the conversation, but that’s what it sounded like,” said Harry.

“Rookwood used to work there. . . .

Maybe Voldemort’ll send Rookwood to do it?”

Hermione nodded, apparently still lost in thought.

Then, quite abruptly, she said, “But you shouldn’t have seen this at all, Harry.”

“What?” he said, taken aback.

“You’re supposed to be learning how to close your mind to this sort of thing,” said Hermione, suddenly stern.

“I know I am,” said Harry.

“But —”

“Well, I think we should just try and forget what you saw,” said Hermione firmly.

“And you ought to put in a bit more effort on your Occlumency from now on.”

The week did not improve as it progressed.

Harry received two more D’s in Potions, was still on tenterhooks that Hagrid might get the sack, and could not stop himself from dwelling on the dream in which he had seen Voldemort, though he did not bring it up with Ron and Hermione again because he did not want another telling-off from Hermione.

He wished very much that he could have talked to Sirius about it, but that was out of the question, so he tried to push the matter to the back of his mind.

Unfortunately, the back of his mind was no longer the secure place it had once been.

“Get up, Potter.”

A couple of weeks after his dream of Rookwood, Harry was to be found, yet again, kneeling on the floor of Snape’s office, trying to clear his head.

He had just been forced, yet again, to relive a stream of very early memories he had not even realized he still had, most of them concerning humiliations Dudley and his gang had inflicted upon him in primary school.

“That last memory,” said Snape.

“What was it?”

“I don’t know,” said Harry, getting wearily to his feet.

He was finding it increasingly difficult to disentangle separate memories from the rush of images and sound that Snape kept calling forth.

“You mean the one where my cousin tried to make me stand in the toilet?”

“No,” said Snape softly.

“I mean the one concerning a man kneeling in the middle of a darkened room . . .”

“It’s . . . nothing,” said Harry.

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Snape’s dark eyes bored into Harry’s.

Remembering what Snape had said about eye contact being crucial to Legilimency, Harry blinked and looked away.

“How do that man and that room come to be inside your head, Potter?” said Snape.

“It —” said Harry, looking everywhere but at Snape, “it was — just a dream I had.”

“A dream,” repeated Snape.

There was a pause during which Harry stared fixedly at a large dead frog suspended in a purple liquid in its jar.

“You do know why we are here, don’t you, Potter?” said Snape in a low, dangerous voice.

“You do know why I am giving up my evenings to this tedious job?”

“Yes,” said Harry stiffly.

“Remind me why we are here, Potter.”

“So I can learn Occlumency,” said Harry, now glaring at a dead eel.

“Correct, Potter.

And dim though you may be” — Harry looked back at Snape, hating him — “I would have thought that after two months’ worth of lessons you might have made some progress.

How many other dreams about the Dark Lord have you had?”

“Just that one,” lied Harry.

“Perhaps,” said Snape, his dark, cold eyes narrowing slightly, “perhaps you actually enjoy having these visions and dreams, Potter.

Maybe they make you feel special — important?”

“No, they don’t,” said Harry, his jaw set and his fingers clenched tightly around the handle of his wand.

“That is just as well, Potter,” said Snape coldly, “because you are neither special nor important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is saying to his Death Eaters.”

“No — that’s your job, isn’t it?” Harry shot at him.

He had not meant to say it; it had burst out of him in temper.

For a long moment they stared at each other, Harry convinced he had gone too far.

But there was a curious, almost satisfied expression on Snape’s face when he answered.

“Yes, Potter,” he said, his eyes glinting.

“That is my job.

Now, if you are ready, we will start again . . .”

He raised his wand.

“One — two — three — Legilimens!”

A hundred dementors were swooping toward Harry across the lake in the grounds. . . .

He screwed up his face in concentration. . . .

They were coming closer. . . .

He could see the dark holes beneath their hoods . . .

Yet he could also see Snape standing in front of him, his eyes fixed upon Harry’s face, muttering under his breath. . . .

And somehow, Snape was growing clearer, and the dementors were growing fainter . . .

Harry raised his own wand.

“Protego!”

Snape staggered; his wand flew upward, away from Harry — and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his —

A hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner. . . .

A greasy-haired teenager sat alone in a dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, shooting down flies. . . .

A girl was laughing as a scrawny boy tried to mount a bucking broomstick —

“ENOUGH!”

Harry felt as though he had been pushed hard in the chest; he took several staggering steps backward, hit some of the shelves covering Snape’s walls and heard something crack.

Snape was shaking slightly, very white in the face.

The back of Harry’s robes were damp.

One of the jars behind him had broken when he fell against it; the pickled slimy thing within was swirling in its draining potion.

“Reparo!” hissed Snape, and the jar sealed itself once more.

“Well, Potter . . . that was certainly an improvement . . .”

Panting slightly, Snape straightened the Pensieve in which he had again stored some of his thoughts before starting the lesson, almost as though checking that they were still there.

“I don’t remember telling you to use a Shield Charm . . .

But there is no doubt that it was effective . . .”

Harry did not speak; he felt that to say anything might be dangerous.

He was sure he had just broken into Snape’s memories, that he had just seen scenes from Snape’s childhood, and it was unnerving to think that the crying little boy who had watched his parents shouting was actually standing in front of him with such loathing in his eyes. . . .

“Let’s try again, shall we?” said Snape.

Harry felt a thrill of dread:

He was about to pay for what had just happened, he was sure of it.

They moved back into position with the desk between them, Harry feeling he was going to find it much harder to empty his mind this time. . . .

“On the count of three, then,” said Snape, raising his wand once more.

“One — two —”

Harry did not have time to gather himself together and attempt to clear his mind, for Snape had already cried “Legilimens!”

He was hurtling along the corridor toward the Department of Mysteries, past the blank stone walls, past the torches —

The plain black door was growing ever larger; he was moving so fast he was going to collide with it, he was feet from it and he could see that chink of faint blue light again —

The door had flown open!

He was through it at last, inside a black-walled, black-floored circular room lit with blue-flamed candles, and there were more doors all around him —

He needed to go on —

But which door ought he to take — ?

“POTTER!”

Harry opened his eyes.

He was flat on his back again with no memory of having gotten there; he was also panting as though he really had run the length of the Department of Mysteries corridor, really had sprinted through the black door and found the circular room. . . .

“Explain yourself!” said Snape, who was standing over him, looking furious.

“I . . . dunno what happened,” said Harry truthfully, standing up.

There was a lump on the back of his head from where he had hit the ground and he felt feverish.

“I’ve never seen that before.

I mean, I told you, I’ve dreamed about the door . . .

But it’s never opened before . . .”

“You are not working hard enough!”

For some reason, Snape seemed even angrier than he had done two minutes before, when Harry had seen into his own memories.

“You are lazy and sloppy, Potter, it is small wonder that the Dark Lord —”

“Can you tell me something, sir?” said Harry, firing up again.

“Why do you call Voldemort the Dark Lord, I’ve only ever heard Death Eaters call him that —”

Snape opened his mouth in a snarl — and a woman screamed from somewhere outside the room.

Snape’s head jerked upward; he was gazing at the ceiling.

“What the — ?” he muttered.

Harry could hear a muffled commotion coming from what he thought might be the entrance hall.

Snape looked around at him, frowning.

“Did you see anything unusual on your way down here, Potter?”

Harry shook his head.

Somewhere above them, the woman screamed again.

Snape strode to his office door, his wand still held at the ready, and swept out of sight.

Harry hesitated for a moment, then followed.

The screams were indeed coming from the entrance hall; they grew louder as Harry ran toward the stone steps leading up from the dungeons.

When he reached the top he found the entrance hall packed.

Students had come flooding out of the Great Hall, where dinner was still in progress, to see what was going on.

Others had crammed themselves onto the marble staircase.

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Harry pushed forward through a knot of tall Slytherins and saw that the onlookers had formed a great ring, some of them looking shocked, others even frightened.

Professor McGonagall was directly opposite Harry on the other side of the hall; she looked as though what she was watching made her feel faintly sick.

Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the entrance hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad.

Her hair was sticking up on end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other; her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart at the seams.

Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upside down; it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her.

Professor Trelawney was staring, apparently terrified, at something Harry could not see but that seemed to be standing at the foot of the stairs.

“No!” she shrieked.

“NO! This cannot be happening. . . .

It cannot . . .

I refuse to accept it!”

“You didn’t realize this was coming?” said a high girlish voice, sounding callously amused, and Harry, moving slightly to his right, saw that Trelawney’s terrifying vision was nothing other than Professor Umbridge.

“Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow’s weather, you must surely have realized that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable you would be sacked?”

“You c-can’t!” howled Professor Trelawney, tears streaming down her face from behind her enormous lenses, “you c-can’t sack me!

I’ve b-been here sixteen years!

H-Hogwarts is m-my h-home!”

“It was your home,” said Professor Umbridge, and Harry was revolted to see the enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney sink, sobbing uncontrollably, onto one of her trunks, “until an hour ago, when the Minister of Magic countersigned the order for your dismissal.

Now kindly remove yourself from this hall.

You are embarrassing us.”

But she stood and watched, with an expression of gloating enjoyment, as Professor Trelawney shuddered and moaned, rocking backward and forward on her trunk in paroxysms of grief.

Harry heard a sob to his left and looked around.

Lavender and Parvati were both crying silently, their arms around each other.

Then he heard footsteps.

Professor McGonagall had broken away from the spectators, marched straight up to Professor Trelawney and was patting her firmly on the back while withdrawing a large handkerchief from within her robes.

“There, there, Sybill . . .

Calm down. . . .

Blow your nose on this. . . .

It’s not as bad as you think, now. . .

You are not going to have to leave Hogwarts . . .”

“Oh really, Professor McGonagall?” said Umbridge in a deadly voice, taking a few steps forward.

“And your authority for that statement is . . . ?”

“That would be mine,” said a deep voice.

The oak front doors had swung open.

Students beside them scuttled out of the way as Dumbledore appeared in the entrance.

What he had been doing out in the grounds Harry could not imagine, but there was something impressive about the sight of him framed in the doorway against an oddly misty night.

Leaving the doors wide behind him, he strode forward through the circle of onlookers toward the place where Professor Trelawney sat, tearstained and trembling, upon her trunk, Professor McGonagall alongside her.

“Yours, Professor Dumbledore?” said Umbridge with a singularly unpleasant little laugh.

“I’m afraid you do not understand the position.

I have here” — she pulled a parchment scroll from within her robes — “an Order of Dismissal signed by myself and the Minister of Magic.

Under the terms of Educational Decree Number Twenty-three, the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts has the power to inspect, place upon probation, and sack any teacher she — that is to say, I — feel is not performing up to the standard required by the Ministry of Magic.

I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch.

I have dismissed her.”

To Harry’s very great surprise, Dumbledore continued to smile.

He looked down at Professor Trelawney, who was still sobbing and choking on her trunk, and said, “You are quite right, of course, Professor Umbridge.

As High Inquisitor you have every right to dismiss my teachers.

You do not, however, have the authority to send them away from the castle.

I am afraid,” he went on, with a courteous little bow, “that the power to do that still resides with the headmaster, and it is my wish that Professor Trelawney continue to live at Hogwarts.”

At this, Professor Trelawney gave a wild little laugh in which a hiccup was barely hidden.

“No — no, I’ll g-go, Dumbledore!

I sh-shall l-leave Hogwarts and s-seek my fortune elsewhere —”

“No,” said Dumbledore sharply.

“It is my wish that you remain, Sybill.”

He turned to Professor McGonagall.

“Might I ask you to escort Sybill back upstairs, Professor McGonagall?”

“Of course,” said McGonagall.

“Up you get, Sybill . . .”

Professor Sprout came hurrying forward out of the crowd and grabbed Professor Trelawney’s other arm.

Together they guided her past Umbridge and up the marble stairs.

Professor Flitwick went scurrying after them, his wand held out before him; he squeaked, “Locomotor trunks!”

Professor Trelawney’s luggage rose into the air and proceeded up the staircase after her, Professor Flitwick bringing up the rear.

Professor Umbridge was standing stock-still, staring at Dumbledore, who continued to smile benignly.

“And what,” she said in a whisper that nevertheless carried all around the entrance hall, “are you going to do with her once I appoint a new Divination teacher who needs her lodgings?”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” said Dumbledore pleasantly.

“You see, I have already found us a new Divination teacher, and he will prefer lodgings on the ground floor.”

“You’ve found — ?” said Umbridge shrilly.

“You’ve found?

Might I remind you, Dumbledore, that under Educational Decree Twenty-two —”

“— the Ministry has the right to appoint a suitable candidate if — and only if — the headmaster is unable to find one,” said Dumbledore.

“And I am happy to say that on this occasion I have succeeded.

May I introduce you?”

He turned to face the open front doors, through which night mist was now drifting.

Harry heard hooves.

There was a shocked murmur around the hall and those nearest the doors hastily moved even farther backward, some of them tripping over in their haste to clear a path for the newcomer.

Through the mist came a face Harry had seen once before on a dark, dangerous night in the Forbidden Forest: white-blond hair and astonishingly blue eyes, the head and torso of a man joined to the palomino body of a horse.

“This is Firenze,” said Dumbledore happily to a thunderstruck Umbridge.

“I think you’ll find him suitable.”