[Part 15] "Harry Potter and Order of Phoenix" by Rowling J.K.

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CHAPTER XXIX. CAREER ADVICE

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"But why haven’t you got Occlumency lessons anymore?" said Hermione, frowning.

“I’ve told you,” Harry muttered. “Snape reckons I can carry on by myself now I’ve got the basics...”

“So you’ve stopped having funny dreams?” said Hermione skeptically.

“Pretty much,” said Harry, not looking at her.

“Well, I don’t think Snape should stop until you’re absolutely sure you can control them!” said Hermione indignantly.

“Harry, I think you should go back to him and ask—”

“No,” said Harry forcefully. “Just drop it, Hermione, okay?”

It was the first day of the Easter holidays and Hermione, as was her custom, had spent a large part of the day drawing up study schedules for the three of them.

Harry and Ron had let her do it — it was easier than arguing with her and, in any case, they might come in useful.

Ron had been startled to discover that there were only six weeks left until their exams.

“How can that come as a shock?” Hermione demanded, as she tapped each little square on Ron’s schedule with her wand so that it flashed a different color according to its subject.

“I dunno...” said Ron, “there’s been a lot going on...”

“Well, there you are,” she said, handing him his schedule, “if you follow that you should do fine.”

Ron looked down at it gloomily, but then brightened.

“You’ve given me an evening off every week!”

“That’s for Quidditch practice,” said Hermione.

The smile faded from Ron’s face.

“What’s the point?” he said. “We’ve got about as much chance of winning the Quidditch Cup this year as Dad’s got of becoming Minister of Magic...”

Hermione said nothing.

She was looking at Harry, who was staring blankly at the opposite wall of the common room while Crookshanks pawed at his hand, trying to get his ears scratched.

“What’s wrong, Harry?”

“What?” he said quickly. “Nothing...”

He seized his copy of Defensive Magical Theory and pretended to be looking something up in the index.

Crookshanks gave him up as a bad job and slunk away under Hermione’s chair.

“I saw Cho earlier,” said Hermione tentatively, “and she looked really miserable too... Have you two had a row again?”

“Wha — oh yeah, we have,” said Harry, seizing gratefully on the excuse.

“What about?”

“That sneak friend of hers, Marietta,” said Harry.

“Yeah, well, I don’t blame you!” said Ron angrily, setting down his study schedule. “If it hadn’t been for her...”

Ron went into a rant about Marietta Edgecombe, which Harry found helpful.

All he had to do was look angry, nod, and say “yeah” and “that’s right” whenever Ron drew breath, leaving his mind free to dwell, ever more miserably, on what he had seen in the Pensieve.

He felt as though the memory of it was eating him from inside.

He had been so sure that his parents had been wonderful people that he never had the slightest difficulty in disbelieving Snape’s aspersions on his father’s character.

Hadn’t people like Hagrid and Sirius told Harry how wonderful his father had been?

(Yeah, well, look what Sirius was like himself, said a nagging voice inside Harry’s head... He was as bad, wasn’t he?)

Yes, he had once overheard Professor McGonagall saying that his father and Sirius had been troublemakers at school, but she had described them as forerunners of the Weasley twins, and Harry could not imagine Fred and George dangling someone upside down for the fun of it... not unless they really loathed them...

Perhaps Malfoy, or somebody who really deserved it...

Harry tried to make a case for Snape having deserved what he had suffered at James’s hands — but hadn’t Lily asked, “What’s he done to you?”

And hadn’t James replied, “It’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean?”

Hadn’t James started it all simply because Sirius said he was bored?

Harry remembered Lupin saying back in Grimmauld Place that Dumbledore had made him prefect in the hope that he would be able to exercise some control over James and Sirius...

But in the Pensieve, he had sat there and let it all happen...

Harry reminded himself that Lily had intervened; his mother had been decent, yet the memory of the look on her face as she had shouted at James disturbed him quite as much as anything else.

She had clearly loathed James and Harry simply could not understand how they could have ended up married.

Once or twice he even wondered whether James had forced her into it...

For nearly five years the thought of his father had been a source of comfort, of inspiration.

Whenever someone had told him he was like James he had glowed with pride inside.

And now... now he felt cold and miserable at the thought of him.

The weather grew breezier, brighter, and warmer as the holidays passed, but Harry was stuck with the rest of the fifth and seventh years, who were all trapped inside, traipsing back and forth to the library.

Harry pretended that his bad mood had no other cause but the approaching exams, and as his fellow Gryffindors were sick of studying themselves, his excuse went unchallenged.

“Harry, I’m talking to you, can you hear me?”

“Huh?”

He looked around.

Ginny Weasley, looking very windswept, had joined him at the library table where he had been sitting alone.

It was late on Sunday evening; Hermione had gone back to Gryffindor Tower to review Ancient Runes; Ron had Quidditch practice.

“Oh hi,” said Harry, pulling his books back toward him. “How come you’re not at practice?”

“It’s over,” said Ginny. “Ron had to take Jack Sloper up to the hospital wing.”

“Why?”

“Well, we’re not sure, but we think he knocked himself out with his own bat.”

She sighed heavily.

“Anyway... a package just arrived, it’s only just got through Umbridge’s new screening process...”

She hoisted a box wrapped in brown paper onto the table; it had clearly been unwrapped and carelessly rewrapped, and there was a scribbled note across it in red ink, reading INSPECTED AND PASSED BY THE HOGWARTS HIGH INQUISITOR.

“It’s Easter eggs from Mum,” said Ginny. “There’s one for you... There you go...”

She handed him a handsome chocolate egg decorated with small, iced Snitches and, according to the packaging, containing a bag of Fizzing Whizbees.

Harry looked at it for a moment, then, to his horror, felt a hard lump rise in his throat.

“Are you okay, Harry?” asked Ginny quietly.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Harry gruffly.

The lump in his throat was painful.

He did not understand why an Easter egg should have made him feel like this.

“You seem really down lately,” Ginny persisted.

“You know, I’m sure if you just talked to Cho...”

“It’s not Cho I want to talk to,” said Harry brusquely.

“Who is it, then?” asked Ginny.

“I...”

He glanced around to make quite sure that nobody was listening; Madam Pince was several shelves away, stamping out a pile of books for a frantic-looking Hannah Abbott.

“I wish I could talk to Sirius,” he muttered. “But I know I can’t.”

More to give himself something to do than because he really wanted any, Harry unwrapped his Easter egg, broke off a large bit, and put it into his mouth.

“Well,” said Ginny slowly, helping herself to a bit of egg too, “if you really want to talk to Sirius, I expect we could think of a way to do it...”

“Come on,” said Harry hopelessly. “With Umbridge policing the fires and reading all our mail?”

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“The thing about growing up with Fred and George,” said Ginny thoughtfully, “is that you sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.”

Harry looked at her.

Perhaps it was the effect of the chocolate — Lupin had always advised eating some after encounters with dementors — or simply because he had finally spoken aloud the wish that had been burning inside him for a week, but he felt a bit more hopeful...

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?”

“Oh damn,” whispered Ginny, jumping to her feet. “I forgot —”

Madam Pince was swooping down upon them, her shriveled face contorted with rage.

“Chocolate in the library!” she screamed.

“Out — out — OUT!”

And whipping out her wand, she caused Harry’s books, bag, and ink bottle to chase him and Ginny from the library, whacking them repeatedly over the head as they ran.

As though to underline the importance of their upcoming examinations, a batch of pamphlets, leaflets, and notices concerning various Wizarding careers appeared on the tables in Gryffindor Tower shortly before the end of the holidays, along with yet another notice on the board, which read:

CAREER ADVICE.

All fifth years will be required to attend a short meeting with their Head of House during the first week of the Summer term, in which they will be given the opportunity to discuss their future careers.

Times of individual appointments are listed below.

Harry looked down the list and found that he was expected in Professor McGonagall’s office at half-past two on Monday, which would mean missing most of Divination.

He and the other fifth years spent a considerable part of the final weekend of the Easter break reading all the career information that had been left there for their perusal.

“Well, I don’t fancy Healing,” said Ron on the last evening of the holidays.

He was immersed in a leaflet that carried the crossed bone-and-wand emblem of St. Mungo’s on its front.

“It says here you need at least an E at N.E.W.T. level in Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

“I mean... blimey... Don’t want much, do they?”

“Well, it’s a very responsible job, isn’t it?” said Hermione absently.

She was poring over a bright pink-and-orange leaflet that was headed SO YOU THINK YOU’D LIKE TO WORK IN MUGGLE RELATIONS?

“You don’t seem to need many qualifications to liaise with Muggles.”

“All they want is an O.W.L. in Muggle Studies.”

“Much more important is your enthusiasm, patience, and a good sense of fun!”

“You’d need more than a good sense of fun to liaise with my uncle,” said Harry darkly.

“Good sense of when to duck, more like.”

He was halfway through a pamphlet on Wizard banking.

“Listen to this: ‘Are you seeking a challenging career involving travel, adventure, and substantial, danger-related treasure bonuses?’”

“Then consider a position with Gringotts Wizarding Bank, who are currently recruiting Curse-Breakers for thrilling opportunities abroad.”

“They want Arithmancy, though.”

“You could do it, Hermione!”

“I don’t much fancy banking,” said Hermione vaguely.

She was now immersed in HAVE YOU GOT WHAT IT TAKES TO TRAIN SECURITY TROLLS?

“Hey,” said a voice in Harry’s ear.

He looked around.

Fred and George had come to join them.

“Ginny’s had a word with us about you,” said Fred, stretching out his legs on the table in front of them and causing several booklets on careers with the Ministry of Magic to slide off onto the floor.

“She says you need to talk to Sirius?”

“What?” said Hermione sharply, freezing with her hand halfway toward picking up MAKE A BANG AT THE DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL ACCIDENTS AND CATASTROPHES.

“Yeah,” said Harry, trying to sound casual. “Yeah, I thought I’d like —”

“Don’t be so ridiculous,” said Hermione, straightening up and looking at him as though she could not believe her eyes.

“With Umbridge groping around in the fires and frisking all the owls?”

“Well, we think we can find a way around that,” said George, stretching and smiling.

“It’s a simple matter of causing a diversion.”

“Now, you might have noticed that we have been rather quiet on the mayhem front during the Easter holidays?”

“What was the point, we asked ourselves, of disrupting leisure time?”

“No point at all, we answered ourselves.”

“And of course, we’d have messed up people’s studying too, which would be the very last thing we’d want to do.”

He gave Hermione a sanctimonious little nod.

She looked rather taken aback by this thoughtfulness.

“But it’s business as usual from tomorrow,” Fred continued briskly.

“And if we’re going to be causing a bit of uproar, why not do it so that Harry can have his chat with Sirius?”

“Yes, but still,” said Hermione with an air of explaining something very simple to somebody very obtuse.

“Even if you do cause a diversion, how is Harry supposed to talk to him?”

“Umbridge’s office,” said Harry quietly.

He had been thinking about it for a fortnight and could think of no alternative.

Umbridge herself had told him that the only fire that was not being watched was her own.

“Are — you — insane?” said Hermione in a hushed voice.

Ron had lowered his leaflet on jobs in the cultivated fungus trade and was watching the conversation warily.

“I don’t think so,” said Harry, shrugging.

“And how are you going to get in there in the first place?”

Harry was ready for this question.

“Sirius’s knife,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Christmas before last Sirius gave me a knife that’ll open any lock,” said Harry.

“So even if she’s bewitched the door so Alohomora won’t work, which I bet she has —”

“What do you think about this?” Hermione demanded of Ron, and Harry was reminded irresistibly of Mrs. Weasley appealing to her husband during Harry’s first dinner in Grimmauld Place.

“I dunno,” said Ron, looking alarmed at being asked to give an opinion.

“If Harry wants to do it, it’s up to him, isn’t it?”

“Spoken like a true friend and Weasley,” said Fred, clapping Ron hard on the back.

“Right, then.”

“We’re thinking of doing it tomorrow, just after lessons, because it should cause maximum impact if everybody’s in the corridors.”

“Harry, we’ll set it off in the east wing somewhere, draw her right away from her own office.”

“I reckon we should be able to guarantee you, what, twenty minutes?” he said, looking at George.

“Easy,” said George.

“What sort of diversion is it?” asked Ron.

“You’ll see, little bro,” said Fred, as he and George got up again.

“At least, you will if you trot along to Gregory the Smarmy’s corridor round about five o’clock tomorrow.”

Harry awoke very early the next day, feeling almost as anxious as he had done on the morning of his hearing at the Ministry of Magic.

It was not only the prospect of breaking into Umbridge’s office and using her fire to speak to Sirius that was making him feel nervous, though that was certainly bad enough.

Today also happened to be the first time he would be in close proximity with Snape since Snape had thrown him out of his office, as they had Potions that day.

After lying in bed for a while thinking about the day ahead, Harry got up very quietly and moved across to the window beside Neville’s bed, staring out on a truly glorious morning.

The sky was a clear, misty, opalescent blue.

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Directly ahead of him, Harry could see the towering beech tree below which his father had once tormented Snape.

He was not sure what Sirius could possibly say to him that would make up for what he had seen in the Pensieve, but he was desperate to hear Sirius’s own account of what had happened, to know of any mitigating factors there might have been, any excuse at all for his father’s behavior.

Something caught Harry’s attention: movement on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

Harry squinted into the sun and saw Hagrid emerging from between the trees.

He seemed to be limping.

As Harry watched, Hagrid staggered to the door of his cabin and disappeared inside it.

Harry watched the cabin for several minutes.

Hagrid did not emerge again, but smoke furled from the chimney, so Hagrid could not be so badly injured that he was unequal to stoking the fire.

Harry turned away from the window, headed back to his trunk, and started to dress.

With the prospect of forcing entry into Umbridge’s office ahead, Harry had never expected the day to be a restful one.

But he had not reckoned on Hermione’s almost continual attempts to dissuade him from what he was planning to do at five o’clock.

For the first time ever, she was at least as inattentive to Professor Binns in History of Magic as Harry and Ron were, keeping up a stream of whispered admonitions that Harry tried very hard to ignore.

“And if she does catch you there, apart from being expelled, she’ll be able to guess you’ve been talking to Snuffles and this time I expect she’ll force you to drink Veritaserum and answer her questions.”

“Hermione,” said Ron in a low and indignant voice.

“Are you going to stop telling Harry off and listen to Binns, or am I going to have to take notes instead?”

“You take notes for a change, it won’t kill you!”

By the time they reached the dungeons, neither Harry nor Ron was speaking to Hermione any longer.

Undeterred, she took advantage of their silence to maintain an uninterrupted flow of dire warnings, all uttered under her breath in a vehement hiss that caused Seamus to waste five whole minutes checking his cauldron for leaks.

Snape, meanwhile, seemed to have decided to act as though Harry were invisible.

Harry was, of course, well used to this tactic, as it was one of Uncle Vernon’s favorites, and on the whole was grateful he had to suffer nothing worse.

In fact, compared to what he usually had to endure from Snape in the way of taunts and snide remarks, he found the new approach something of an improvement and was pleased to find that when left well alone, he was able to concoct an Invigoration Draught quite easily.

At the end of the lesson he scooped some of the potion into a flask, corked it, and took it up to Snape’s desk for marking, feeling that he might at last have scraped an E.

He had just turned away when he heard a smashing noise.

Malfoy gave a gleeful yell of laughter.

Harry whipped around again.

His potion sample lay in pieces on the floor, and Snape was watching him with a look of gloating pleasure.

“Whoops,” he said softly.

“Another zero, then, Potter . . .”

Harry was too incensed to speak.

He strode back to his cauldron, intending to fill another flask and force Snape to mark it, but saw to his horror that the rest of the contents had vanished.

“I’m sorry!” said Hermione with her hands over her mouth.

“I’m really sorry, Harry, I thought you’d finished, so I cleared up!”

Harry could not bring himself to answer.

When the bell rang he hurried out of the dungeon without a backward glance and made sure that he found himself a seat between Neville and Seamus for lunch so that Hermione could not start nagging him about using Umbridge’s office again.

He was in such a bad mood by the time that he got to Divination that he had quite forgotten his career appointment with Professor McGonagall, remembering only when Ron asked him why he wasn’t in her office.

He hurtled back upstairs and arrived out of breath, only a few minutes late.

“Sorry, Professor,” he panted, as he closed the door.

“I forgot . . .”

“No matter, Potter,” she said briskly.

But as she spoke, somebody else sniffed from the corner.

Harry looked around.

Professor Umbridge was sitting there, a clipboard on her knee, a fussy little pie-frill around her neck, and a small, horribly smug smile on her face.

“Sit down, Potter,” said Professor McGonagall tersely.

Her hands shook slightly as she shuffled the many pamphlets littering her desk.

Harry sat down with his back to Umbridge and did his best to pretend he could not hear the scratching of her quill on her clipboard.

“Well, Potter, this meeting is to talk over any career ideas you might have, and to help you decide which subjects you should continue into sixth and seventh years,” said Professor McGonagall.

“Have you had any thoughts about what you would like to do after you leave Hogwarts?”

“Er,” said Harry.

He was finding the scratching noise from behind him very distracting.

“Yes?” Professor McGonagall prompted Harry.

“Well, I thought of, maybe, being an Auror,” Harry mumbled.

“You’d need top grades for that,” said Professor McGonagall, extracting a small, dark leaflet from under the mass on her desk and opening it.

“They ask for a minimum of five N.E.W.T.s, and nothing under ‘Exceeds Expectations’ grade, I see.”

“Then you would be required to undergo a stringent series of character and aptitude tests at the Auror office.”

“It’s a difficult career path, Potter; they only take the best.”

“In fact, I don’t think anybody has been taken on in the last three years.”

At this moment Professor Umbridge gave a very tiny cough, as though she was trying to see how quietly she could do it.

Professor McGonagall ignored her.

“You’ll want to know which subjects you ought to take, I suppose?” she went on, talking a little more loudly than before.

“Yes,” said Harry.

“Defense Against the Dark Arts, I suppose?”

“Naturally,” said Professor McGonagall crisply.

“I would also advise —”

Professor Umbridge gave another cough, a little more audible this time.

Professor McGonagall closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again, and continued as though nothing had happened.

“I would also advise Transfiguration, because Aurors frequently need to Transfigure or Untransfigure in their work.”

“And I ought to tell you now, Potter, that I do not accept students into my N.E.W.T. classes unless they have achieved ‘Exceeds Expectations’ or higher at Ordinary Wizarding Level.”

“I’d say you’re averaging ‘Acceptable’ at the moment, so you’ll need to put in some good hard work before the exams to stand a chance of continuing.”

“Then you ought to do Charms, always useful, and Potions.”

“Yes, Potter, Potions,” she added, with the merest flicker of a smile.

“Poisons and antidotes are essential study for Aurors.”

“And I must tell you that Professor Snape absolutely refuses to take students who get anything other than ‘Outstanding’ in their O.W.L.s, so —”

Professor Umbridge gave her most pronounced cough yet.

“May I offer you a cough drop, Dolores?” Professor McGonagall asked curtly, without looking at Professor Umbridge.

“Oh no, thank you very much,” said Umbridge, with that simpering laugh Harry hated so much.

“I just wondered whether I could make the teensiest interruption, Minerva?”

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“I daresay you’ll find you can,” said Professor McGonagall through tightly gritted teeth.

“I was just wondering whether Mr. Potter has quite the temperament for an Auror?” said Professor Umbridge sweetly.

“Were you?” said Professor McGonagall haughtily.

“Well, Potter,” she continued, as though there had been no interruption.

“If you are serious in this ambition, I would advise you to concentrate hard on bringing your Transfiguration and Potions up to scratch.”

“I see Professor Flitwick has graded you between ‘Acceptable’ and ‘Exceeds Expectations’ for the last two years, so your Charm work seems satisfactory.”

“As for Defense Against the Dark Arts, your marks have been generally high.”

“Professor Lupin in particular thought you — are you quite sure you wouldn’t like a cough drop, Dolores?”

“Oh, no need, thank you, Minerva,” simpered Professor Umbridge, who had just coughed her loudest yet.

“I was just concerned that you might not have Harry’s most recent Defense Against the Dark Arts marks in front of you.”

“I’m quite sure I slipped in a note . . .”

“What, this thing?” said Professor McGonagall in a tone of revulsion, as she pulled a sheet of pink parchment from between the leaves of Harry’s folder.

She glanced down it, her eyebrows slightly raised, then placed it back into the folder without comment.

“Yes, as I was saying, Potter, Professor Lupin thought you showed a pronounced aptitude for the subject, and obviously for an Auror —”

“Did you not understand my note, Minerva?” asked Professor Umbridge in honeyed tones, quite forgetting to cough.

“Of course I understood it,” said Professor McGonagall, her teeth clenched so tightly that the words came out a little muffled.

“Well, then, I am confused. . . . I’m afraid I don’t quite understand how you can give Mr. Potter false hope that —”

“False hope?” repeated Professor McGonagall, still refusing to look round at Professor Umbridge.

“He has achieved high marks in all his Defense Against the Dark Arts tests —”

“I’m terribly sorry to have to contradict you, Minerva, but as you will see from my note, Harry has been achieving very poor results in his classes with me —”

“I should have made my meaning plainer,” said Professor McGonagall, turning at last to look Umbridge directly in the eyes.

“He has achieved high marks in all Defense Against the Dark Arts tests set by a competent teacher.”

Professor Umbridge’s smile vanished as suddenly as a lightbulb blowing.

She sat back in her chair, turned a sheet on her clipboard, and began scribbling very fast indeed, her bulging eyes rolling from side to side.

Professor McGonagall turned back to Harry, her thin nostrils flared, her eyes burning.

“Any questions, Potter?”

“Yes,” said Harry.

“What sort of character and aptitude tests do the Ministry do on you, if you get enough N.E.W.T.s?”

“Well, you’ll need to demonstrate the ability to react well to pressure and so forth,” said Professor McGonagall.

“Perseverance and dedication, because Auror training takes a further three years, not to mention very high skills in practical defense.”

“It will mean a lot more study even after you’ve left school, so unless you’re prepared to —”

“I think you’ll also find,” said Umbridge, her voice very cold now.

“That the Ministry looks into the records of those applying to be Aurors.”

“Their criminal records.”

“— unless you’re prepared to take even more exams after Hogwarts, you should really look at another —”

“— which means that this boy has as much chance of becoming an Auror as Dumbledore has of ever returning to this school.”

“A very good chance, then,” said Professor McGonagall.

“Potter has a criminal record,” said Umbridge loudly.

“Potter has been cleared of all charges,” said Professor McGonagall, even more loudly.

Professor Umbridge stood up.

She was so short that this did not make a great deal of difference, but her fussy, simpering demeanor had given place to a hard fury that made her broad, flabby face look oddly sinister.

“Potter has no chance whatsoever of becoming an Auror!”

Professor McGonagall got to her feet too, and in her case this was a much more impressive move.

She towered over Professor Umbridge.

“Potter,” she said in ringing tones.

“I will assist you to become an Auror if it is the last thing I do!”

“If I have to coach you nightly I will make sure you achieve the required results!”

“The Minister of Magic will never employ Harry Potter!” said Umbridge, her voice rising furiously.

“There may well be a new Minister of Magic by the time Potter is ready to join!” shouted Professor McGonagall.

“Aha!” shrieked Professor Umbridge, pointing a stubby finger at McGonagall.

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Of course!”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it, Minerva McGonagall?”

“You want Cornelius Fudge replaced by Albus Dumbledore!”

“You think you’ll be where I am, don’t you, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister and headmistress to boot!”

“You are raving,” said Professor McGonagall, superbly disdainful.

“Potter, that concludes our career consultation.”

Harry swung his bag over his shoulder and hurried out of the room, not daring to look at Umbridge.

He could hear her and Professor McGonagall continuing to shout at each other all the way back along the corridor.

Professor Umbridge was still breathing as though she had just run a race when she strode into their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson that afternoon.

“I hope you’ve thought better of what you were planning to do, Harry,” Hermione whispered, the moment they had opened their books to chapter thirty-four (“Non-Retaliation and Negotiation”).

“Umbridge looks like she’s in a really bad mood already . . .”

Every now and then Umbridge shot glowering looks at Harry, who kept his head down, staring at Defensive Magical Theory, his eyes unfocused, thinking. . . .

He could just imagine Professor McGonagall’s reaction if he were caught trespassing in Professor Umbridge’s office mere hours after she had vouched for him. . . .

There was nothing to stop him simply going back to Gryffindor Tower and hoping that sometime during the next summer holiday he would have a chance to ask Sirius about the scene he had witnessed in the Pensieve. . . .

Nothing, except that the thought of taking this sensible course of action made him feel as though a lead weight had dropped into his stomach. . . .

And then there was the matter of Fred and George, whose diversion was already planned, not to mention the knife Sirius had given him, which was currently residing in his schoolbag along with his father’s old Invisibility Cloak. . . .

But the fact remained that if he were caught . . .

“Dumbledore sacrificed himself to keep you in school, Harry!” whispered Hermione, raising her book to hide her face from Umbridge.

“And if you get thrown out today it will all have been for nothing!”

He could abandon the plan and simply learn to live with the memory of what his father had done on a summer’s day more than twenty years ago. . . .

And then he remembered Sirius in the fire upstairs in the Gryffindor common room . . .

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“You’re less like your father than I thought. . . . The risk would’ve been what made it fun for James . . .”

But did he want to be like his father anymore?

“Harry, don’t do it, please don’t do it!” Hermione said in anguished tones as the bell rang at the end of the class.

He did not answer; he did not know what to do.

Ron seemed determined to give neither his opinion nor his advice.

He would not look at Harry, though when Hermione opened her mouth to try dissuading Harry some more, he said in a low voice, “Give it a rest, okay? He can make up his own mind.”

Harry’s heart beat very fast as he left the classroom.

He was halfway along the corridor outside when he heard the unmistakable sounds of a diversion going off in the distance.

There were screams and yells reverberating from somewhere above them.

People exiting the classrooms all around Harry were stopping in their tracks and looking up at the ceiling fearfully —

Then Umbridge came pelting out of her classroom as fast as her short legs would carry her.

Pulling out her wand, she hurried off in the opposite direction: It was now or never.

“Harry — please!” said Hermione weakly.

But he had made up his mind — hitching his bag more securely onto his shoulder he set off at a run, weaving in and out of students now hurrying in the opposite direction, off to see what all the fuss was about in the east wing. . . .

Harry reached the corridor where Umbridge’s office was situated and found it deserted.

Dashing behind a large suit of armor whose helmet creaked around to watch him, he pulled open his bag, seized Sirius’s knife, and donned the Invisibility Cloak.

He then crept slowly and carefully back out from behind the suit of armor and along the corridor until he reached Umbridge’s door.

He inserted the blade of the magical knife into the crack around it and moved it gently up and down, then withdrew it.

There was a tiny click, and the door swung open.

He ducked inside the office, closed the door quickly behind him, and looked around.

It was empty; nothing was moving except the horrible kittens on the plates continuing to frolic on the wall above the confiscated broomsticks.

Harry pulled off his Cloak and, striding over to the fireplace, found what he was looking for within seconds: a small box containing glittering Floo powder.

He crouched down in front of the empty grate, his hands shaking.

He had never done this before, though he thought he knew how it must work.

Sticking his head into the fireplace, he took a large pinch of powder and dropped it onto the logs stacked neatly beneath him.

They exploded at once into emerald-green flames.

“Number twelve, Grimmauld Place!” Harry said loudly and clearly.

It was one of the most curious sensations he had ever experienced; he had traveled by Floo powder before, of course, but then it had been his entire body that had spun around and around in the flames through the network of Wizarding fireplaces that stretched over the country.

This time, his knees remained firm upon the cold floor of Umbridge’s office, and only his head hurtled through the emerald fire. . . .

And then, abruptly as it had begun, the spinning stopped.

Feeling rather sick and as though he was wearing an exceptionally hot muffler around his head, Harry opened his eyes to find that he was looking up out of the kitchen fireplace at the long, wooden table, where a man sat poring over a piece of parchment.

“Sirius?”

The man jumped and looked around.

It was not Sirius, but Lupin.

“Harry!” he said, looking thoroughly shocked.

“What are you — what’s happened, is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” said Harry.

“I just wondered — I mean, I just fancied a — a chat with Sirius.”

“I’ll call him,” said Lupin, getting to his feet, still looking perplexed.

“He went upstairs to look for Kreacher, he seems to be hiding in the attic again . . .”

And Harry saw Lupin hurry out of the kitchen.

Now he was left with nothing to look at but the chair and table legs.

He wondered why Sirius had never mentioned how very uncomfortable it was to speak out of the fire — his knees were already objecting painfully to their prolonged contact with Umbridge’s hard stone floor.

Lupin returned with Sirius at his heels moments later.

“What is it?” said Sirius urgently, sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes and dropping to the ground in front of the fire, so that he and Harry were on a level.

Lupin knelt down too, looking very concerned.

“Are you all right? Do you need help?”

“No,” said Harry, “it’s nothing like that. . . .

I just wanted to talk . . . about my dad . . .”

They exchanged a look of great surprise, but Harry did not have time to feel awkward or embarrassed.

His knees were becoming sorer by the second, and he guessed that five minutes had already passed from the start of the diversion — George had only guaranteed him twenty.

He therefore plunged immediately into the story of what he had seen in the Pensieve.

When he had finished, neither Sirius nor Lupin spoke for a moment.

Then Lupin said quietly, “I wouldn’t like you to judge your father on what you saw there, Harry.

He was only fifteen —”

“I’m fifteen!” said Harry heatedly.

“Look, Harry,” said Sirius placatingly, “James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other, it was just one of those things, you can understand that, can’t you?

I think James was everything Snape wanted to be — he was popular, he was good at Quidditch, good at pretty much everything.

And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts and James — whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry — always hated the Dark Arts.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, “but he just attacked Snape for no good reason, just because — well, just because you said you were bored,” he finished with a slightly apologetic note in his voice.

“I’m not proud of it,” said Sirius quickly.

Lupin looked sideways at Sirius and then said, “Look, Harry, what you’ve got to understand is that your father and Sirius were the best in the school at whatever they did — everyone thought they were the height of cool — if they sometimes got a bit carried away —”

“If we were sometimes arrogant little berks, you mean,” said Sirius.

Lupin smiled.

“He kept messing up his hair,” said Harry in a pained voice.

Sirius and Lupin laughed.

“I’d forgotten he used to do that,” said Sirius affectionately.

“Was he playing with the Snitch?” said Lupin eagerly.

“Yeah,” said Harry, watching uncomprehendingly as Sirius and Lupin beamed reminiscently.

“Well . . . I thought he was a bit of an idiot.”

“Of course he was a bit of an idiot!” said Sirius bracingly.

“We were all idiots!

Well — not Moony so much,” he said fairly, looking at Lupin, but Lupin shook his head.

“Did I ever tell you to lay off Snape?” he said.

“Did I ever have the guts to tell you I thought you were out of order?”

“Yeah, well,” said Sirius, “you made us feel ashamed of ourselves sometimes. . . .

That was something . . .”

“And,” said Harry doggedly, determined to say everything that was on his mind now he was here, “he kept looking over at the girls by the lake, hoping they were watching him!”

“Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around,” said Sirius, shrugging.

“He couldn’t stop himself showing off whenever he got near her.”

“How come she married him?” Harry asked miserably.

“She hated him!”

“Nah, she didn’t,” said Sirius.

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“She started going out with him in seventh year,” said Lupin.

“Once James had deflated his head a bit,” said Sirius.

“And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,” said Lupin.

“Even Snape?” said Harry.

“Well,” said Lupin slowly, “Snape was a special case.

I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James, so you couldn’t really expect James to take that lying down, could you?”

“And my mum was okay with that?”

“She didn’t know too much about it, to tell you the truth,” said Sirius. “I mean, James didn’t take Snape on dates with her and jinx him in front of her, did he?”

Sirius frowned at Harry, who was still looking unconvinced.

“Look,” he said, “your father was the best friend I ever had, and he was a good person. A lot of people are idiots at the age of fifteen. He grew out of it.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Harry heavily. “I just never thought I’d feel sorry for Snape.”

“Now you mention it,” said Lupin, a faint crease between his eyebrows, “how did Snape react when he found you’d seen all this?”

“He told me he’d never teach me Occlumency again,” said Harry indifferently, “like that’s a big disappoint —”

“He WHAT?” shouted Sirius, causing Harry to jump and inhale a mouthful of ashes.

“Are you serious, Harry?” said Lupin quickly. “He’s stopped giving you lessons?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, surprised at what he considered a great overreaction. “But it’s okay, I don’t care, it’s a bit of a relief to tell you the —”

“I’m coming up there to have a word with Snape!” said Sirius forcefully, and he actually made to stand up, but Lupin wrenched him back down again.

“If anyone’s going to tell Snape it will be me!” he said firmly. “But Harry, first of all, you’re to go back to Snape and tell him that on no account is he to stop giving you lessons — when Dumbledore hears —”

“I can’t tell him that, he’d kill me!” said Harry, outraged. “You didn’t see him when we got out of the Pensieve —”

“Harry, there is nothing so important as you learning Occlumency!” said Lupin sternly. “Do you understand me? Nothing!”

“Okay, okay,” said Harry, thoroughly discomposed, not to mention annoyed. “I’ll . . . I’ll try and say something to him. . . . But it won’t be . . .”

He fell silent. He could hear distant footsteps.

“Is that Kreacher coming downstairs?”

“No,” said Sirius, glancing behind him. “It must be somebody your end . . .”

Harry’s heart skipped several beats.

“I’d better go!” he said hastily, and he pulled his head backward out of Grimmauld Place’s fire. For a moment his head seemed to be revolving on his shoulders, and then he found himself kneeling in front of Umbridge’s fire with his head firmly back on, watching the emerald flames flicker and die.

“Quickly, quickly!” he heard a wheezy voice mutter right outside the office door. “Ah, she’s left it open . . .”

Harry dived for the Invisibility Cloak and had just managed to pull it back over himself when Filch burst into the office.

He looked absolutely delighted about something and was talking to himself feverishly as he crossed the room, pulled open a drawer in Umbridge’s desk, and began rifling through the papers inside it.

“Approval for Whipping . . . Approval for Whipping . . . I can do it at last. . . . They’ve had it coming to them for years . . .”

He pulled out a piece of parchment, kissed it, then shuffled rapidly back out of the door, clutching it to his chest.

Harry leapt to his feet and, making sure that he had his bag and the Invisibility Cloak was completely covering him, he wrenched open the door and hurried out of the office after Filch, who was hobbling along faster than Harry had ever seen him go.

One landing down from Umbridge’s office and Harry thought it was safe to become visible again; he pulled off the Cloak, shoved it in his bag and hurried onward.

There was a great deal of shouting and movement coming from the entrance hall.

He ran down the marble staircase and found what looked like most of the school assembled there.

It was just like the night when Trelawney had been sacked.

Students were standing all around the walls in a great ring (some of them, Harry noticed, covered in a substance that looked very like Stinksap); teachers and ghosts were also in the crowd.

Prominent among the onlookers were members of the Inquisitorial Squad, who were all looking exceptionally pleased with themselves, and Peeves, who was bobbing overhead, gazed down upon Fred and George, who stood in the middle of the floor with the unmistakable look of two people who had just been cornered.

“So!” said Umbridge triumphantly, whom Harry realized was standing just a few stairs in front of him, once more looking down upon her prey. “So . . . you think it amusing to turn a school corridor into a swamp, do you?”

“Pretty amusing, yeah,” said Fred, looking back up at her without the slightest sign of fear.

Filch elbowed his way closer to Umbridge, almost crying with happiness.

“I’ve got the form, Headmistress,” he said hoarsely, waving the piece of parchment Harry had just seen him take from her desk. “I’ve got the form and I’ve got the whips waiting. . . . Oh, let me do it now . . .”

“Very good, Argus,” she said. “You two,” she went on, gazing down at Fred and George, “are about to learn what happens to wrongdoers in my school.”

“You know what?” said Fred. “I don’t think we are.”

He turned to his twin.

“George,” said Fred, “I think we’ve outgrown full-time education.”

“Yeah, I’ve been feeling that way myself,” said George lightly.

“Time to test our talents in the real world, d’you reckon?” asked Fred.

“Definitely,” said George.

And before Umbridge could say a word, they raised their wands and said together, “Accio Brooms!”

Harry heard a loud crash somewhere in the distance.

Looking to his left he ducked just in time — Fred and George’s broomsticks, one still trailing the heavy chain and iron peg with which Umbridge had fastened them to the wall, were hurtling along the corridor toward their owners.

They turned left, streaked down the stairs, and stopped sharply in front of the twins, the chain clattering loudly on the flagged stone floor.

“We won’t be seeing you,” Fred told Professor Umbridge, swinging his leg over his broomstick.

“Yeah, don’t bother to keep in touch,” said George, mounting his own.

Fred looked around at the assembled students, and at the silent, watchful crowd.

“If anyone fancies buying a Portable Swamp, as demonstrated upstairs, come to number ninety-three, Diagon Alley — Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes,” he said in a loud voice. “Our new premises!”

“Special discounts to Hogwarts students who swear they’re going to use our products to get rid of this old bat,” added George, pointing at Professor Umbridge.

“STOP THEM!” shrieked Umbridge, but it was too late.

As the Inquisitorial Squad closed in, Fred and George kicked off from the floor, shooting fifteen feet into the air, the iron peg swinging dangerously below.

Fred looked across the hall at the poltergeist bobbing on his level above the crowd.

“Give her hell from us, Peeves.”

And Peeves, whom Harry had never seen take an order from a student before, swept his belled hat from his head and sprang to a salute as Fred and George wheeled about to tumultuous applause from the students below and sped out of the open front doors into the glorious sunset.

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CHAPTER XXX. GRAWP

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The story of Fred and George’s flight to freedom was retold so often over the next few days that Harry could tell it would soon become the stuff of Hogwarts legend.

Within a week, even those who had been eyewitnesses were half-convinced that they had seen the twins dive-bomb Umbridge on their brooms, pelting her with Dungbombs before zooming out of the doors.

In the immediate aftermath of their departure, there was a great wave of talk about copying them, so that Harry frequently heard students saying things like, “Honestly, some days I just feel like jumping on my broom and leaving this place,” or else, “One more lesson like that and I might just do a Weasley.”

Fred and George had made sure that nobody was likely to forget them very soon.

For one thing, they had not left instructions on how to remove the swamp that now filled the corridor on the fifth floor of the east wing.

Umbridge and Filch had been observed trying different means of removing it but without success.

Eventually, the area was roped off and Filch, gnashing his teeth furiously, was given the task of punting students across it to their classrooms.

Harry was certain that teachers like McGonagall or Flitwick could have removed the swamp in an instant, but just as in the case of Fred and George’s Wildfire Whiz-Bangs, they seemed to prefer to watch Umbridge struggle.

Then there were the two large broom-shaped holes in Umbridge’s office door, through which Fred and George’s Cleansweeps had smashed to rejoin their masters.

Filch fitted a new door and removed Harry’s Firebolt to the dungeons where, it was rumored, Umbridge had set an armed security troll to guard it.

However, her troubles were far from over.

Inspired by Fred and George’s example, a great number of students were now vying for the newly vacant positions of Troublemakers-in-Chief.

In spite of the new door, somebody managed to slip a hairy-snouted niffler into Umbridge’s office, which promptly tore the place apart in its search for shiny objects, leapt on Umbridge on her reentrance, and tried to gnaw the rings off her stubby fingers.

Dungbombs and Stinkpellets were dropped so frequently in the corridors that it became the new fashion for students to perform Bubble-Head Charms on themselves before leaving lessons, which ensured them a supply of fresh clean air, even though it gave them all the peculiar appearance of wearing upside-down goldfish bowls on their heads.

Filch prowled the corridors with a horsewhip ready in his hands, desperate to catch miscreants, but the problem was that there were now so many of them that he did not know which way to turn.

The Inquisitorial Squad were attempting to help him, but odd things kept happening to its members.

Warrington of the Slytherin Quidditch team reported to the hospital wing with a horrible skin complaint that made him look as though he had been coated in cornflakes.

Pansy Parkinson, to Hermione’s delight, missed all her lessons the following day, as she had sprouted antlers.

Meanwhile, it became clear just how many Skiving Snackboxes Fred and George had managed to sell before leaving Hogwarts.

Umbridge only had to enter her classroom for the students assembled there to faint, vomit, develop dangerous fevers, or else spout blood from both nostrils.

Shrieking with rage and frustration, she attempted to trace the mysterious symptoms to their source, but the students told her stubbornly they were suffering “Umbridgeitis.”

After putting four successive classes in detention and failing to discover their secret, she was forced to give up and allow the bleeding, swooning, sweating, and vomiting students to leave her classes in droves.

But not even the users of the Snackboxes could compete with that master of chaos, Peeves, who seemed to have taken Fred’s parting words deeply to heart.

Cackling madly, he soared through the school, upending tables, bursting out of blackboards, and toppling statues and vases.

Twice he shut Mrs. Norris inside suits of armor, from which she was rescued, yowling loudly, by the furious caretaker.

He smashed lanterns and snuffed out candles, juggled burning torches over the heads of screaming students, caused neatly stacked piles of parchment to topple into fires or out of windows, flooded the second floor when he pulled off all the taps in the bathrooms, dropped a bag of tarantulas in the middle of the Great Hall during breakfast, and, whenever he fancied a break, spent hours at a time floating along after Umbridge and blowing loud raspberries every time she spoke.

None of the staff but Filch seemed to be stirring themselves to help her.

Indeed, a week after Fred and George’s departure, Harry witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves, who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier, and could have sworn he heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, “It unscrews the other way.”

To cap matters, Montague had still not recovered from his sojourn in the toilet.

He remained confused and disoriented, and his parents were to be observed one Tuesday morning striding up the front drive, looking extremely angry.

“Should we say something?” said Hermione in a worried voice, pressing her cheek against the Charms window so that she could see Mr. and Mrs. Montague marching inside.

“About what happened to him? In case it helps Madam Pomfrey cure him?”

“’Course not, he’ll recover,” said Ron indifferently.

“Anyway, more trouble for Umbridge, isn’t it?” said Harry in a satisfied voice.

He and Ron both tapped the teacups they were supposed to be charming with their wands.

Harry’s spouted four very short legs that would not reach the desk and wriggled pointlessly in midair.

Ron’s grew four very thin spindly legs that hoisted the cup off the desk with great difficulty, trembled for a few seconds, then folded, causing the cup to crack into two.

“Reparo!” said Hermione quickly, mending Ron’s cup with a wave of her wand.

“That’s all very well, but what if Montague’s permanently injured?”

“Who cares?” said Ron irritably, while his teacup stood drunkenly again, trembling violently at the knees.

“Montague shouldn’t have tried to take all those points from Gryffindor, should he?

If you want to worry about anyone, Hermione, worry about me!”

“You?” she said, catching her teacup as it scampered happily away across the desk on four sturdy little willow-patterned legs and replacing it in front of her.

“Why should I be worried about you?”

“When Mum’s next letter finally gets through Umbridge’s screening process,” said Ron bitterly, now holding his cup up while its frail legs tried feebly to support its weight, “I’m going to be in deep trouble.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s sent a Howler again.”

“But —”

“It’ll be my fault Fred and George left, you wait,” said Ron darkly.

“She’ll say I should’ve stopped them leaving, I should’ve grabbed the ends of their brooms and hung on or something.

Yeah, it’ll be all my fault . . .”

“Well, if she does say that, it’ll be very unfair.

You couldn’t have done anything!

But I’m sure she won’t, I mean, if it’s really true they’ve got premises in Diagon Alley now, they must have been planning this for ages . . .”

“Yeah, but that’s another thing, how did they get premises?” said Ron, hitting his teacup so hard with his wand that its legs collapsed again and it lay twitching before him.

“It’s a bit dodgy, isn’t it?

They’ll need loads of Galleons to afford the rent on a place in Diagon Alley, she’ll want to know what they’ve been up to, to get their hands on that sort of gold . . .”

“Well, yes, that occurred to me too,” said Hermione, allowing her teacup to jog in neat little circles around Harry’s, whose stubby little legs were still unable to touch the desktop.

“I’ve been wondering whether Mundungus has persuaded them to sell stolen goods or something awful . . .”

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“He hasn’t,” said Harry curtly.

“How do you know?” said Ron and Hermione together.

“Because —”

Harry hesitated, but the moment to confess finally seemed to have come.

There was no good to be gained in keeping silent if it meant anyone suspected that Fred and George were criminals.

“Because they got the gold from me.

I gave them my Triwizard winnings last June.”

There was a shocked silence, then Hermione’s teacup jogged right over the edge of the desk and smashed on the floor.

“Oh, Harry, you didn’t!” she said.

“Yes, I did,” said Harry mutinously.

“And I don’t regret it either — I didn’t need the gold, and they’ll be great at a joke shop . . .”

“But this is excellent!” said Ron, looking thrilled.

“It’s all your fault, Harry — Mum can’t blame me at all!

Can I tell her?”

“Yeah, I suppose you’d better,” said Harry dully.

“’Specially if she thinks they’re receiving stolen cauldrons or something . . .”

Hermione said nothing at all for the rest of the lesson, but Harry had a shrewd suspicion that her self-restraint was bound to crack before long.

Sure enough, once they had left the castle for break and were standing around in the weak May sunshine, she fixed Harry with a beady eye and opened her mouth with a determined air.

Harry interrupted her before she had even started.

“It’s no good nagging me, it’s done,” he said firmly.

“Fred and George have got the gold — spent a good bit of it too, by the sounds of it — and I can’t get it back from them and I don’t want to.

So save your breath, Hermione.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything about Fred and George!” she said in an injured voice.

Ron snorted disbelievingly and Hermione threw him a very dirty look.

“No, I wasn’t!” she said angrily.

“As a matter of fact, I was going to ask Harry when he’s going to go back to Snape and ask for Occlumency lessons again!”

Harry’s heart sank.

Once they had exhausted the subject of Fred and George’s dramatic departure, which admittedly had taken many hours, Ron and Hermione had wanted to hear news of Sirius.

As Harry had not confided in them the reason he had wanted to talk to Sirius in the first place, it had been hard to think of things to tell them.

He had ended up saying to them truthfully that Sirius wanted Harry to resume Occlumency lessons.

He had been regretting this ever since; Hermione would not let the subject drop and kept reverting to it when Harry least expected it.

“You can’t tell me you’ve stopped having funny dreams,” Hermione said now.

“Because Ron told me last night you were muttering in your sleep again . . .”

Harry threw Ron a furious look.

Ron had the grace to look ashamed of himself.

“You were only muttering a bit,” he mumbled apologetically.

“Something about ‘just a bit farther.’”

“I dreamed I was watching you lot play Quidditch,” Harry lied brutally.

“I was trying to get you to stretch out a bit farther to grab the Quaffle.”

Ron’s ears went red.

Harry felt a kind of vindictive pleasure.

He had not, of course, dreamed anything of the sort.

Last night he had once again made the journey along the Department of Mysteries corridor.

He had passed through the circular room, then the room full of clicking and dancing light, until he found himself again inside that cavernous room full of shelves on which were ranged dusty glass spheres. . . .

He had hurried straight toward row number ninety-seven, turned left, and ran along it. . . .

It had probably been then that he had spoken aloud. . . .

Just a bit farther . . .

For he could feel his conscious self struggling to wake. . . .

And before he had reached the end of the row, he had found himself lying in bed again, gazing up at the canopy of his four-poster.

“You are trying to block your mind, aren’t you?” said Hermione, looking beadily at Harry.

“You are keeping going with your Occlumency?”

“Of course I am,” said Harry, trying to sound as though this question was insulting, but not quite meeting her eye.

The truth was that he was so intensely curious about what was hidden in that room full of dusty orbs that he was quite keen for the dreams to continue.

The problem was that with just under a month to go until the exams and every free moment devoted to studying, his mind seemed saturated with information when he went to bed.

So that he found it very difficult to get to sleep at all.

When he did, his overwrought brain presented him most nights with stupid dreams about the exams.

He also suspected that part of his mind — the part that often spoke in Hermione’s voice — now felt guilty on the occasions it strayed down that corridor ending in the black door.

And sought to wake him before he could reach journey’s end.

“You know,” said Ron, whose ears were still flaming red.

“If Montague doesn’t recover before Slytherin play Hufflepuff, we might be in with a chance of winning the Cup.”

“Yeah, I s’pose so,” said Harry, glad of a change of subject.

“I mean, we’ve won one, lost one — if Slytherin lose to Hufflepuff next Saturday —”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Harry, losing track of what he was agreeing to.

Cho Chang had just walked across the courtyard, determinedly not looking at him.

The final match of the Quidditch season, Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw, was to take place on the last weekend of May.

Although Slytherin had been narrowly defeated by Hufflepuff in their last match, Gryffindor was not daring to hope for victory.

Due mainly (though of course nobody said it to him) to Ron’s abysmal goalkeeping record.

He, however, seemed to have found a new optimism.

“I mean, I can’t get any worse, can I?” he told Harry and Hermione grimly over breakfast on the morning of the match.

“Nothing to lose now, is there?”

“You know,” said Hermione, as she and Harry walked down to the pitch a little later in the midst of a very excitable crowd.

“I think Ron might do better without Fred and George around.”

“They never exactly gave him a lot of confidence . . .”

Luna Lovegood overtook them with what appeared to be a live eagle perched on top of her head.

“Oh gosh, I forgot!” said Hermione, watching the eagle flapping its wings as Luna walked serenely past a group of cackling and pointing Slytherins.

“Cho will be playing, won’t she?”

Harry, who had not forgotten this, merely grunted.

They found seats in the second to topmost row of the stands.

It was a fine, clear day.

Ron could not wish for better, and Harry found himself hoping against hope that Ron would not give the Slytherins cause for more rousing choruses of “Weasley Is Our King.”

Lee Jordan, who had been very dispirited since Fred and George had left, was commentating as usual.

As the teams zoomed out onto the pitches he named the players with something less than his usual gusto.

“. . . Bradley . . . Davies . . . Chang,” he said, and Harry felt his stomach perform, less of a back flip, more a feeble lurch as Cho walked out onto the pitch, her shiny black hair rippling in the slight breeze.

He was not sure what he wanted to happen anymore, except that he could not stand any more rows.

Even the sight of her chatting animatedly to Roger Davies as they prepared to mount their brooms caused him only a slight twinge of jealousy.

“And they’re off!” said Lee.

“And Davies takes the Quaffle immediately, Ravenclaw Captain Davies with the Quaffle, he dodges Johnson, he dodges Bell, he dodges Spinnet as well. . . . He’s going straight for goal!”

“He’s going to shoot — and — and —” Lee swore very loudly.

“And he’s scored.”

Harry and Hermione groaned with the rest of the Gryffindors.

Predictably, horribly, the Slytherins on the other side of the stands began to sing.

Weasley cannot save a thing.

He cannot block a single ring . . .

“Harry,” said a hoarse voice in Harry’s ear.

“Hermione . . .”

Harry looked around and saw Hagrid’s enormous bearded face sticking between the seats.

Apparently he had squeezed his way all along the row behind, for the first and second years he had just passed had a ruffled, flattened look about them.

For some reason, Hagrid was bent double as though anxious not to be seen, though he was still at least four feet taller than everybody else.

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“Listen,” he whispered.

“Can yeh come with me? Now? While ev’ryone’s watchin’ the match?”

“Er . . . can’t it wait, Hagrid?” asked Harry.

“Till the match is over?”

“No,” said Hagrid.

“No, Harry, it’s gotta be now . . . while ev’ryone’s lookin’ the other way. . . . Please?”

Hagrid’s nose was gently dripping blood.

His eyes were both blackened.

Harry had not seen him this close up since his return to the school.

He looked utterly woebegone.

“’Course,” said Harry at once.

“’Course we’ll come . . .”

He and Hermione edged back along their row of seats, causing much grumbling among the students who had to stand up for them.

The people in Hagrid’s row were not complaining, merely attempting to make themselves as small as possible.

“I ’ppreciate this, you two, I really do,” said Hagrid as they reached the stairs.

He kept looking around nervously as they descended toward the lawn below.

“I jus’ hope she doesn’ notice us goin’ . . .”

“You mean Umbridge?” said Harry.

“She won’t, she’s got her whole Inquisitorial Squad sitting with her, didn’t you see? She must be expecting trouble at the match.”

“Yeah, well, a bit o’ trouble wouldn’ hurt,” said Hagrid, pausing to peer around the edge of the stands to make sure the stretch of lawn between there and his cabin was deserted.

“Give us more time . . .”

“What is it, Hagrid?” said Hermione, looking up at him with a concerned expression on her face as they hurried across the lawn toward the edge of the forest.

“Yeh — yeh’ll see in a mo’,” said Hagrid, looking over his shoulder as a great roar rose from the stands behind them.

“Hey — did someone jus’ score?”

“It’ll be Ravenclaw,” said Harry heavily.

“Good . . . good . . .” said Hagrid distractedly.

“Tha’s good . . .”

They had to jog to keep up with him as he strode across the lawn, looking around with every other step.

When they reached his cabin, Hermione turned automatically left toward the front door.

Hagrid, however, walked straight past it into the shade of the trees on the outermost edge of the forest, where he picked up a crossbow that was leaning against a tree.

When he realized they were no longer with him, he turned.

“We’re goin’ in here,” he said, jerking his shaggy head behind him.

“Into the forest?” said Hermione, perplexed.

“Yeah,” said Hagrid.

“C’mon now, quick, before we’re spotted!”

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, then ducked into the cover of the trees behind Hagrid, who was already striding away from them into the green gloom, his crossbow over his arm.

Harry and Hermione ran to catch up with him.

“Hagrid, why are you armed?” said Harry.

“Jus’ a precaution,” said Hagrid, shrugging his massive shoulders.

“You didn’t bring your crossbow the day you showed us the thestrals,” said Hermione timidly.

“Nah, well, we weren’ goin’ in so far then,” said Hagrid.

“An’ anyway, tha’ was before Firenze left the forest, wasn’ it?”

“Why does Firenze leaving make a difference?” asked Hermione curiously.

“’Cause the other centaurs are good an’ riled at me, tha’s why,” said Hagrid quietly, glancing around.

“They used ter be — well, yeh couldn’ call ’em friendly — but we got on all righ’.

Kept ’emselves to ’emselves, bu’ always turned up if I wanted a word.

Not anymore . . .”

He sighed deeply.

“Firenze said that they’re angry because he went to work for Dumbledore?” Harry asked, tripping on a protruding root because he was busy watching Hagrid’s profile.

“Yeah,” said Hagrid heavily. “Well, angry doesn’ cover it. Ruddy livid. If I hadn’ stepped in, I reckon they’d’ve kicked Firenze ter death —”

“They attacked him?” said Hermione, sounding shocked.

“Yep,” said Hagrid gruffly, forcing his way through several low-hanging branches. “He had half the herd onto him —”

“And you stopped it?” said Harry, amazed and impressed. “By yourself?”

“’Course I did, couldn’t stand by an’ watch ’em kill him, could I?” said Hagrid. “Lucky I was passin’, really . . . an’ I’d’ve thought Firenze mighta remembered tha’ before he started sendin’ me stupid warnin’s!” he added hotly and unexpectedly.

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, startled, but Hagrid, scowling, did not elaborate.

“Anyway,” he said, breathing a little more heavily than usual, “since then the other centaurs’ve bin livid with me an’ the trouble is, they’ve got a lot of influence in the forest. . . . Cleverest creatures in here . . .”

“Is that why we’re here, Hagrid?” asked Hermione. “The centaurs?”

“Ah no,” said Hagrid, shaking his head dismissively, “no, it’s not them. . . . Well, o’ course, they could complicate the problem, yeah. . . . But yeh’ll see what I mean in a bit . . .”

On this incomprehensible note he fell silent and forged a little ahead, taking one stride for every three of theirs, so that they had great trouble keeping up with him.

The path was becoming increasingly overgrown and the trees grew so closely together as they walked farther and farther into the forest that it was as dark as dusk.

They were soon a long way past the clearing where Hagrid had shown them the thestrals, but Harry felt no sense of unease until Hagrid stepped unexpectedly off the path and began wending his way in and out of trees toward the dark heart of the forest.

“Hagrid?” said Harry, fighting his way through thickly knotted brambles over which Hagrid had stepped easily and remembering very vividly what had happened to him on the other occasions he had stepped off the forest path.

“Where are we going?”

“Bit further,” said Hagrid over his shoulder. “C’mon, Harry. . . . We need ter keep together now . . .”

It was a great struggle to keep up with Hagrid, what with branches and thickets of thorn through which Hagrid marched as easily as though they were cobwebs, but which snagged Harry and Hermione’s robes, frequently entangling them so severely that they had to stop for minutes at a time to free themselves.

Harry’s arms and legs were soon covered in small cuts and scratches.

They were so deep in the forest now that sometimes all Harry could see of Hagrid in the gloom was a massive dark shape ahead of him.

Any sound seemed threatening in the muffled silence.

The breaking of a twig echoed loudly and the tiniest rustle of movement, though it might have been made by an innocent sparrow, caused Harry to peer through the gloom for a culprit.

It occurred to him that he had never managed to get this far into the forest without meeting some kind of creature — their absence struck him as rather ominous.

“Hagrid, would it be all right if we lit our wands?” said Hermione quietly.

“Er . . . all righ’,” Hagrid whispered back. “In fact . . .”

He stopped suddenly and turned around; Hermione walked right into him and was knocked over backward.

Harry caught her just before she hit the forest floor.

“Maybe we bes’ jus’ stop fer a momen’, so I can . . . fill yeh in,” said Hagrid. “Before we ge’ there, like.”

“Good!” said Hermione, as Harry set her back on her feet.

They both murmured “Lumos!” and their wand-tips ignited.

Hagrid’s face swam through the gloom by the light of the two wavering beams and Harry saw that he looked nervous and sad again.

“Righ’,” said Hagrid. “Well . . . see . . . the thing is . . .”

He took a great breath.

“Well, there’s a good chance I’m goin’ ter be gettin’ the sack any day now,” he said.

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, then back at him.

“But you’ve lasted this long —” Hermione said tentatively. “What makes you think —”

“Umbridge reckons it was me that put tha’ niffler in her office.”

“And was it?” said Harry, before he could stop himself.

“No, it ruddy well wasn’!” said Hagrid indignantly. “On’y anythin’ ter do with magical creatures an’ she thinks it’s got somethin’ ter do with me. Yeh know she’s bin lookin’ fer a chance ter get rid of me ever since I got back. I don’ wan’ ter go, o’ course, but if it wasn’ fer . . . well . . . the special circumstances I’m abou’ ter explain to yeh, I’d leave righ’ now, before she’s go’ the chance ter do it in front o’ the whole school, like she did with Trelawney.”

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Harry and Hermione both made noises of protest, but Hagrid overrode them with a wave of one of his enormous hands.

“It’s not the end o’ the world, I’ll be able ter help Dumbledore once I’m outta here, I can be useful ter the Order. An’ you lot’ll have Grubbly-Plank, yeh’ll — yeh’ll get through yer exams fine . . .” His voice trembled and broke.

“Don’ worry abou’ me,” he said hastily, as Hermione made to pat his arm.

He pulled his enormous spotted handkerchief from the pocket of his waistcoat and mopped his eyes with it.

“Look, I wouldn’ be tellin’ yer this at all if I didn’ have ter. See, if I go . . . well, I can’ leave withou’ . . . withou’ tellin’ someone . . . because I’ll — I’ll need you two ter help me. An’ Ron, if he’s willin’.”

“Of course we’ll help you,” said Harry at once. “What do you want us to do?”

Hagrid gave a great sniff and patted Harry wordlessly on the shoulder with such force that Harry was knocked sideways into a tree.

“I knew yeh’d say yes,” said Hagrid into his handkerchief, “but I won’ . . . never . . . forget . . . Well . . . c’mon . . . jus’ a little bit further through here . . . Watch yerselves, now, there’s nettles . . .”

They walked on in silence for another fifteen minutes.

Harry had opened his mouth to ask how much farther they had to go when Hagrid threw out his right arm to signal that they should stop.

“Really easy,” he said softly. “Very quiet, now . . .”

They crept forward and Harry saw that they were facing a large, smooth mound of earth nearly as tall as Hagrid that he thought, with a jolt of dread, was sure to be the lair of some enormous animal.

Trees had been ripped up at the roots all around the mound, so that it stood on a bare patch of ground surrounded by heaps of trunks and boughs that formed a kind of fence or barricade, behind which Harry, Hermione, and Hagrid now stood.

“Sleepin’,” breathed Hagrid.

Sure enough, Harry could hear a distant, rhythmic rumbling that sounded like a pair of enormous lungs at work.

He glanced sideways at Hermione, who was gazing at the mound with her mouth slightly open.

She looked utterly terrified.

“Hagrid,” she said in a whisper barely audible over the sound of the sleeping creature, “who is he?”

Harry found this an odd question . . . “What is it?” was the one he had been planning on asking.

“Hagrid, you told us,” said Hermione, her wand now shaking in her hand, “you told us none of them wanted to come!”

Harry looked from her to Hagrid and then, as realization hit him, he looked back at the mound with a small gasp of horror.

The great mound of earth, on which he, Hermione, and Hagrid could easily have stood, was moving slowly up and down in time with the deep, grunting breathing.

It was not a mound at all.

It was the curved back of what was clearly . . .

“Well — no — he didn’ want ter come,” said Hagrid, sounding desperate. “But I had ter bring him, Hermione, I had ter!”

“But why?” asked Hermione, who sounded as though she wanted to cry.

“Why — what — oh, Hagrid!”

“I knew if I jus’ got him back,” said Hagrid, sounding close to tears himself, “an’ — an’ taught him a few manners — I’d be able ter take him outside an’ show ev’ryone he’s harmless!”

“Harmless!” said Hermione shrilly, and Hagrid made frantic hushing noises with his hands as the enormous creature before them grunted loudly and shifted in its sleep.

“He’s been hurting you all this time, hasn’t he? That’s why you’ve had all these injuries!”

“He don’ know his own strength!” said Hagrid earnestly. “An’ he’s gettin’ better, he’s not fightin’ so much anymore —”

“So this is why it took you two months to get home!” said Hermione distractedly.

“Oh Hagrid, why did you bring him back if he didn’t want to come, wouldn’t he have been happier with his own people?”

“They were all bullyin’ him, Hermione, ’cause he’s so small!” said Hagrid.

“Small?” said Hermione. “Small?”

“Hermione, I couldn’ leave him,” said Hagrid, tears now trickling down his bruised face into his beard. “See — he’s my brother!”

Hermione simply stared at him, her mouth open.

“Hagrid, when you say ‘brother,’” said Harry slowly, “do you mean — ?”

“Well — half-brother,” amended Hagrid. “Turns out me mother took up with another giant when she left me dad, an’ she went an’ had Grawp here —”

“Grawp?” said Harry.

“Yeah . . . well, tha’s what it sounds like when he says his name,” said Hagrid anxiously. “He don’ speak a lot of English. . . . I’ve bin tryin’ ter teach him. . . . Anyway, she don’ seem ter have liked him much more’n she liked me. . . . See, with giantesses, what counts is producin’ good big kids, and he’s always been a bit on the runty side fer a giant — on’y sixteen foot —”

“Oh yes, tiny!” said Hermione, with a kind of hysterical sarcasm.

“Absolutely minuscule!”

“He was bein’ kicked around by all o’ them — I jus’ couldn’ leave him —”

“Did Madame Maxime want to bring him back?” asked Harry.

“She — well, she could see it was right importan’ ter me,” said Hagrid, twisting his enormous hands.

“Bu’ — bu’ she got a bit tired of him after a while, I must admit . . . so we split up on the journey home. . . . She promised not ter tell anyone though . . .”

“How on earth did you get him back without anyone noticing?” said Harry.

“Well, tha’s why it took so long, see,” said Hagrid.

“Could on’y travel by nigh’ an’ through wild country an’ stuff. ’Course, he covers the ground pretty well when he wants ter, but he kep’ wantin’ ter go back . . .”

“Oh Hagrid, why on earth didn’t you let him!” said Hermione, flopping down onto a ripped-up tree and burying her face in her hands.

“What do you think you’re going to do with a violent giant who doesn’t even want to be here!”

“Well, now — ‘violent’ — tha’s a bit harsh,” said Hagrid, still twisting his hands agitatedly.

“I’ll admit he mighta taken a couple o’ swings at me when he’s bin in a bad mood, but he’s gettin’ better, loads better, settlin’ down well . . .”

“What are those ropes for, then?” Harry asked.

He had just noticed ropes thick as saplings stretching from around the trunks of the largest nearby trees toward the place where Grawp lay curled on the ground with his back to them.

“You have to keep him tied up?” said Hermione faintly.

“Well . . . yeah . . .” said Hagrid, looking anxious.

“See — it’s like I say — he doesn’ really know his strength —”

Harry understood now why there had been such a suspicious lack of any other living creature in this part of the forest.

“So what is it you want Harry and Ron and me to do?” Hermione asked apprehensively.

“Look after him,” said Hagrid croakily.

“After I’m gone.”

Harry and Hermione exchanged miserable looks, Harry uncomfortably aware that he had already promised Hagrid that he would do whatever he asked.

“What — what does that involve, exactly?” Hermione inquired.

“Not food or anythin’!” said Hagrid eagerly.

“He can get his own food, no problem. Birds an’ deer an’ stuff . . . No, it’s company he needs. If I jus’ knew someone was carryin’ on tryin’ ter help him a bit . . . teachin’ him, yeh know . . .”

Harry said nothing, but turned to look back at the gigantic form lying asleep on the ground in front of them.

Grawp had his back to them. Unlike Hagrid, who simply looked like a very oversize human, Grawp looked strangely misshapen.

What Harry had taken to be a vast mossy boulder to the left of the great earthen mound he now recognized as Grawp’s head.

It was much larger in proportion to the body than a human head, almost perfectly round and covered with tightly curling, close-growing hair the color of bracken.

The rim of a single large, fleshy ear was visible on top of the head, which seemed to sit, rather like Uncle Vernon’s, directly upon the shoulders with little or no neck in between.

The back, under what looked like a dirty brownish smock comprised of animal skins sewn roughly together, was very broad, and as Grawp slept, it seemed to strain a little at the rough seams of the skins.

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The legs were curled up under the body; Harry could see the soles of enormous, filthy, bare feet, large as sledges, resting one on top of the other on the earthy forest floor.

“You want us to teach him,” Harry said in a hollow voice.

He now understood what Firenze’s warning had meant. His attempt is not working. He would do better to abandon it.

Of course, the other creatures who lived in the forest would have heard Hagrid’s fruitless attempts to teach Grawp English. . . .

“Yeah — even if yeh jus’ talk ter him a bit,” said Hagrid hopefully.

“’Cause I reckon, if he can talk ter people, he’ll understand more that we all like him really, an’ want him to stay . . .”

Harry looked at Hermione, who peered back at him from between the fingers over her face.

“Kind of makes you wish we had Norbert back, doesn’t it?” he said and she gave a very shaky laugh.

“Yeh’ll do it, then?” said Hagrid, who did not seem to have caught what Harry had just said.

“We’ll . . .” said Harry, already bound by his promise.

“We’ll try, Hagrid . . .”

“I knew I could count on yeh, Harry,” Hagrid said, beaming in a very watery way and dabbing at his face with his handkerchief again.

“An’ I don’ wan’ yeh ter put yerself out too much, like. . . . I know yeh’ve got exams. . . . If yeh could jus’ nip down here in yer Invisibility Cloak maybe once a week an’ have a little chat with him . . . I’ll wake him up, then — introduce you —”

“Wha — no!” said Hermione, jumping up.

“Hagrid, no, don’t wake him, really, we don’t need —”

But Hagrid had already stepped over the great trunk in front of them and was proceeding toward Grawp.

When he was around ten feet away, he lifted a long, broken bough from the ground, smiled reassuringly over his shoulder at Harry and Hermione, and then poked Grawp hard in the middle of the back with the end of the bough.

The giant gave a roar that echoed around the silent forest.

Birds in the treetops overhead rose twittering from their perches and soared away.

In front of Harry and Hermione, meanwhile, the gigantic Grawp was rising from the ground, which shuddered as he placed an enormous hand upon it to push himself onto his knees and turned his head to see who and what had disturbed him.

“All righ’, Grawpy?” said Hagrid in a would-be cheery voice, backing away with the long bough raised, ready to poke Grawp again.

“Had a nice sleep, eh?”

Harry and Hermione retreated as far as they could while still keeping the giant within their sights.

Grawp knelt between two trees he had not yet uprooted.

They looked up into his startlingly huge face, which resembled a gray full moon swimming in the gloom of the clearing.

It was as though the features had been hewn onto a great stone ball.

The nose was stubby and shapeless, the mouth lopsided and full of misshapen yellow teeth the size of half-bricks.

The small eyes were a muddy greenish-brown and just now were half gummed together with sleep.

Grawp raised dirty knuckles as big as cricket balls to his eyes, rubbed vigorously, then, without warning, pushed himself to his feet with surprising speed and agility.

“Oh my . . .” Harry heard Hermione squeal, terrified, beside him.

The trees to which the other ends of the ropes around Grawp’s wrists and ankles were attached creaked ominously.

He was, as Hagrid had said, at least sixteen feet tall.

Gazing blearily around, he reached out a hand the size of a beach umbrella, seized a bird’s nest from the upper branches of a towering pine and turned it upside down with a roar of apparent displeasure that there was no bird in it — eggs fell like grenades toward the ground and Hagrid threw his arms over his head to protect himself.

“Anyway, Grawpy,” shouted Hagrid, looking up apprehensively in case of further falling eggs, “I’ve brought some friends ter meet yeh.

Remember, I told yeh I might? Remember, when I said I might have ter go on a little trip an’ leave them ter look after yeh fer a bit? Remember that, Grawpy?”

But Grawp merely gave another low roar; it was hard to say whether he was listening to Hagrid or whether he even recognized the sounds Hagrid was making as speech.

He had now seized the top of the pine tree and was pulling it toward him, evidently for the simple pleasure of seeing how far it would spring back when he let go.

“Now, Grawpy, don’ do that!” shouted Hagrid.

“Tha’s how you ended up pullin’ up the others —”

And sure enough, Harry could see the earth around the tree’s roots beginning to crack.

“I got company fer yeh!” Hagrid shouted.

“Company, see! Look down, yeh big buffoon, I brought yeh some friends!”

“Oh Hagrid, don’t,” moaned Hermione.

But Hagrid had already raised the bough again and gave Grawp’s knee a sharp poke.

The giant let go of the top of the pine tree, which swayed menacingly and deluged Hagrid with a rain of needles, and looked down.

“This,” said Hagrid, hastening over to where Harry and Hermione stood, “is Harry, Grawp! Harry Potter! He migh’ be comin’ ter visit yeh if I have ter go away, understand?”

The giant had only just realized that Harry and Hermione were there.

They watched, in great trepidation, as he lowered his huge boulder of a head so that he could peer blearily at them.

“An’ this is Hermione, see? Her —” Hagrid hesitated.

Turning to Hermione he said, “Would yeh mind if he called yeh Hermy, Hermione? On’y it’s a difficult name fer him ter remember . . .”

“No, not at all,” squeaked Hermione.

“This is Hermy, Grawp! An’ she’s gonna be comin’ an’ all! Is’n tha’ nice? Eh? Two friends fer yeh ter — GRAWPY, NO!”

Grawp’s hand had shot out of nowhere toward Hermione — Harry seized her and pulled her backward behind the tree, so that Grawp’s fist scraped the trunk but closed on thin air.

“BAD BOY, GRAWPY!” Harry heard Hagrid yelling, as Hermione clung to Harry behind the tree, shaking and whimpering.

“VERY BAD BOY! YEH DON’ GRAB — OUCH!”

Harry poked his head out from around the trunk and saw Hagrid lying on his back, his hand over his nose.

Grawp, apparently losing interest, had straightened up again and was again engaged in pulling back the pine as far as it would go.

“Righ’,” said Hagrid thickly, getting up with one hand pinching his bleeding nose and the other grasping his crossbow.

“Well . . . there yeh are. . . . Yeh’ve met him an’ — an’ now he’ll know yeh when yeh come back.

Yeah . . . well . . .”

He looked up at Grawp, who was now pulling back the pine with an expression of detached pleasure on his boulderish face; the roots were creaking as he ripped them away from the ground. . . .

“Well, I reckon tha’s enough fer one day,” said Hagrid.

“We’ll — er — we’ll go back now, shall we?”

Harry and Hermione nodded.

Hagrid shouldered his crossbow again and, still pinching his nose, led the way back into the trees.

Nobody spoke for a while, not even when they heard the distant crash that meant Grawp had pulled over the pine tree at last.

Hermione’s face was pale and set.

Harry could not think of a single thing to say.

What on earth was going to happen when somebody found out that Hagrid had hidden Grawp in the forest?

And he had promised that he, Ron, and Hermione would continue Hagrid’s totally pointless attempts to civilize the giant. . . .

How could Hagrid, even with his immense capacity to delude himself that fanged monsters were lovably harmless, fool himself that Grawp would ever be fit to mix with humans?

“Hold it,” said Hagrid abruptly, just as Harry and Hermione were struggling through a patch of thick knotgrass behind him.

He pulled an arrow out of the quiver over his shoulder and fitted it into the crossbow.

Harry and Hermione raised their wands; now that they had stopped walking, they too could hear movement close by.

“Oh blimey,” said Hagrid quietly.

“I thought that we told you, Hagrid,” said a deep male voice, “that you are no longer welcome here?”

A man’s naked torso seemed for an instant to be floating toward them through the dappled green half-light.

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Then they saw that his waist joined smoothly with a horse’s chestnut body.

This centaur had a proud, high-cheekboned face and long black hair.

Like Hagrid, he was armed: A quiverful of arrows and a long bow were slung over his shoulders.

“How are yeh, Magorian?” said Hagrid warily.

The trees behind the centaur rustled and four or five more emerged behind him.

Harry recognized the black-bodied and bearded Bane, whom he had met nearly four years ago on the same night he had met Firenze.

Bane gave no sign that he had ever seen Harry before.

“So,” he said, with a nasty inflection in his voice, before turning immediately to Magorian.

“We agreed, I think, what we would do if this human showed his face in the forest again?”

“‘This human’ now, am I?” said Hagrid testily.

“Jus’ fer stoppin’ all of yeh committin’ murder?”

“You ought not to have meddled, Hagrid,” said Magorian.

“Our ways are not yours, nor are our laws. Firenze has betrayed and dishonored us.”

“I dunno how yeh work that out,” said Hagrid impatiently.

“He’s done nothin’ except help Albus Dumbledore —”

“Firenze has entered into servitude to humans,” said a gray centaur with a hard, deeply lined face.

“Servitude!” said Hagrid scathingly.

“He’s doin’ Dumbledore a favor is all —”

“He is peddling our knowledge and secrets among humans,” said Magorian quietly.

“There can be no return from such disgrace.”

“If yeh say so,” said Hagrid, shrugging.

“But personally I think yeh’re makin’ a big mistake —”

“As are you, human,” said Bane, “coming back into our forest when we warned you —”

“Now, you listen ter me,” said Hagrid angrily.

“I’ll have less of the ‘our’ forest, if it’s all the same ter you.

It’s not up ter you who comes an’ goes in here —”

“No more is it up to you, Hagrid,” said Magorian smoothly.

“I shall let you pass today because you are accompanied by your young —”

“They’re not his!” interrupted Bane contemptuously.

“Students, Magorian, from up at the school!

They have probably already profited from the traitor Firenze’s teachings . . .”

“Nevertheless,” said Magorian calmly, “the slaughter of foals is a terrible crime. . . .

We do not touch the innocent.

Today, Hagrid, you pass.

Henceforth, stay away from this place.

You forfeited the friendship of the centaurs when you helped the traitor Firenze escape us.”

“I won’ be kept outta the fores’ by a bunch of mules like you!” said Hagrid loudly.

“Hagrid,” said Hermione in a high-pitched and terrified voice, as both Bane and the gray centaur pawed at the ground, “let’s go, please let’s go!”

Hagrid moved forward, but his crossbow was still raised and his eyes were still fixed threateningly upon Magorian.

“We know what you are keeping in the forest, Hagrid!” Magorian called after them, as the centaurs slipped out of sight.

“And our tolerance is waning!”

Hagrid turned and gave every appearance of wanting to walk straight back to Magorian again.

“You’ll tolerate him as long as he’s here, it’s as much his forest as yours!” he yelled, while Harry and Hermione both pushed with all their might against Hagrid’s moleskin waistcoat in an effort to keep him moving forward.

Still scowling, he looked down; his expression changed to mild surprise at the sight of them both pushing him.

He seemed not to have felt it.

“Calm down, you two,” he said, turning to walk on while they panted along behind him.

“Ruddy old nags though, eh?”

“Hagrid,” said Hermione breathlessly, skirting the patch of nettles they had passed on their way there, “if the centaurs don’t want humans in the forest, it doesn’t really look as though Harry and I will be able —”

“Ah, you heard what they said,” said Hagrid dismissively.

“They wouldn’t hurt foals — I mean, kids.

Anyway, we can’ let ourselves be pushed around by that lot . . .”

“Nice try,” Harry murmured to Hermione, who looked crestfallen.

At last they rejoined the path and after another ten minutes, the trees began to thin.

They were able to see patches of clear blue sky again and hear, in the distance, the definite sounds of cheering and shouting.

“Was that another goal?” asked Hagrid, pausing in the shelter of the trees as the Quidditch stadium came into view.

“Or d’you reckon the match is over?”

“I don’t know,” said Hermione miserably.

Harry saw that she looked much the worse for wear; her hair was full of bits of twig and leaves, her robes were ripped in several places and there were numerous scratches on her face and arms.

He knew he could look little better.

“I reckon it’s over, yeh know!” said Hagrid, still squinting toward the stadium.

“Look — there’s people comin’ out already — if you two hurry yeh’ll be able ter blend in with the crowd an’ no one’ll know you weren’t there!”

“Good idea,” said Harry.

“Well . . . see you later, then, Hagrid . . .”

“I don’t believe him,” said Hermione in a very unsteady voice, the moment they were out of earshot of Hagrid.

“I don’t believe him.

I really don’t believe him . . .”

“Calm down,” said Harry.

“Calm down!” she said feverishly.

“A giant!

A giant in the forest!

And we’re supposed to give him English lessons!

Always assuming, of course, we can get past the herd of murderous centaurs on the way in and out!

I — don’t — believe — him!”

“We haven’t got to do anything yet!” Harry tried to reassure her in a quiet voice, as they joined a stream of jabbering Hufflepuffs heading back toward the castle.

“He’s not asking us to do anything unless he gets chucked out and that might not even happen —”

“Oh come off it, Harry!” said Hermione angrily, stopping dead in her tracks so that the people behind her had to swerve to avoid her.

“Of course he’s going to be chucked out and to be perfectly honest, after what we’ve just seen, who can blame Umbridge?”

There was a pause in which Harry glared at her, and her eyes filled slowly with tears.

“You didn’t mean that,” said Harry quietly.

“No . . . well . . . all right . . . I didn’t,” she said, wiping her eyes angrily.

“But why does he have to make life so difficult for himself — for us?”

“I dunno —”

Weasley is our King,

Weasley is our King,

He didn’t let the Quaffle in,

Weasley is our King . . .

“And I wish they’d stop singing that stupid song,” said Hermione miserably, “haven’t they gloated enough?”

A great tide of students was moving up the sloping lawns from the pitch.

“Oh, let’s get in before we have to meet the Slytherins,” said Hermione.

Weasley can save anything,

He never leaves a single ring,

That’s why Gryffindors all sing:

Weasley is our King.

“Hermione . . .” said Harry slowly.

The song was growing louder, but it was issuing not from a crowd of green-and-silver-clad Slytherins, but from a mass of red and gold moving slowly toward the castle, which was bearing a solitary figure upon its many shoulders. . . .

Weasley is our King,

Weasley is our King,

He didn’t let the Quaffle in,

Weasley is our King . . .

“No!” said Hermione in a hushed voice.

“YES!” said Harry loudly.

“HARRY! HERMIONE!” yelled Ron, waving the silver Quidditch Cup in the air and looking quite beside himself.

“WE DID IT! WE WON!”

They beamed up at him as he passed; there was a scrum at the door of the castle and Ron’s head got rather badly bumped on the lintel, but nobody seemed to want to put him down.

Still singing, the crowd squeezed itself into the entrance hall and out of sight.

Harry and Hermione watched them go, beaming, until the last echoing strains of “Weasley Is Our King” died away.

Then they turned to each other, their smiles fading.

“We’ll save our news till tomorrow, shall we?” said Harry.

“Yes, all right,” said Hermione wearily.

“I’m not in any hurry . . .”

They climbed the steps together.

At the front doors both instinctively looked back at the Forbidden Forest.

Harry was not sure whether it was his imagination or not, but he rather thought he saw a small cloud of birds erupting into the air over the treetops in the distance, almost as though the tree in which they had been nesting had just been pulled up by the roots.