[Part 5] "Harry Potter and Order of Phoenix" by Rowling J.K.

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CHAPTER IX. THE WOES OF MRS. WEASLEY

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Dumbledore’s abrupt departure took Harry completely by surprise.

He remained sitting where he was in the chained chair, struggling with his feelings of shock and relief.

The Wizengamot were all getting to their feet, talking, and gathering up their papers and packing them away.

Harry stood up.

Nobody seemed to be paying him the slightest bit of attention except the toadlike witch on Fudge’s right, who was now gazing down at him instead of at Dumbledore.

Ignoring her, he tried to catch Fudge’s eye, or Madam Bones’s, wanting to ask whether he was free to go, but Fudge seemed quite determined not to notice Harry, and Madam Bones was busy with her briefcase, so he took a few tentative steps toward the exit and when nobody called him back, broke into a very fast walk.

He took the last few steps at a run, wrenched open the door, and almost collided with Mr. Weasley, who was standing right outside, looking pale and apprehensive.

“Dumbledore didn’t say —”

“Cleared,” Harry said, pulling the door closed behind him, “of all charges!”

Beaming, Mr. Weasley seized Harry by the shoulders.

“Harry, that’s wonderful! Well, of course, they couldn’t have found you guilty, not on the evidence, but even so, I can’t pretend I wasn’t —”

But Mr. Weasley broke off, because the courtroom door had just opened again.

The Wizengamot were filing out.

“Merlin’s beard,” said Mr. Weasley wonderingly, pulling Harry aside to let them all pass, “you were tried by the full court?”

“I think so,” said Harry quietly.

One or two of the passing wizards nodded to Harry as they passed and a few, including Madam Bones, said, “Morning, Arthur,” to Mr. Weasley, but most averted their eyes.

Cornelius Fudge and the toadlike witch were almost the last to leave the dungeon.

Fudge acted as though Mr. Weasley and Harry were part of the wall, but again, the witch looked almost appraisingly at Harry as she passed.

Last of all to pass was Percy.

Like Fudge, he completely ignored his father and Harry; he marched past clutching a large roll of parchment and a handful of spare quills, his back rigid and his nose in the air.

The lines around Mr. Weasley’s mouth tightened slightly, but other than this he gave no sign that he had noticed his third son.

“I’m going to take you straight back so you can tell the others the good news,” he said, beckoning Harry forward as Percy’s heels disappeared up the stairs to the ninth level.

“I’ll drop you off on the way to that toilet in Bethnal Green. Come on . . .”

“So what will you have to do about the toilet?” Harry asked, grinning.

Everything suddenly seemed five times funnier than usual.

It was starting to sink in: He was cleared, he was going back to Hogwarts.

“Oh, it’s a simple enough anti-jinx,” said Mr. Weasley as they mounted the stairs, “but it’s not so much having to repair the damage, it’s more the attitude behind the vandalism, Harry.

Muggle-baiting might strike some wizards as funny, but it’s an expression of something much deeper and nastier, and I for one —”

Mr. Weasley broke off in mid-sentence.

They had just reached the ninth-level corridor, and Cornelius Fudge was standing a few feet away from them, talking quietly to a tall man with sleek blond hair and a pointed, pale face.

The second man turned at the sound of their footsteps.

He too broke off in mid-conversation, his cold gray eyes narrowed and fixed upon Harry’s face.

“Well, well, well . . . Patronus Potter,” said Lucius Malfoy coolly.

Harry felt winded, as though he had just walked into something heavy.

He had last seen those cool gray eyes through slits in a Death Eater’s hood, and last heard that man’s voice jeering in a dark graveyard while Lord Voldemort tortured him.

He could not believe that Lucius Malfoy dared look him in the face; he could not believe that he was here, in the Ministry of Magic, or that Cornelius Fudge was talking to him, when Harry had told Fudge mere weeks ago that Malfoy was a Death Eater.

“The Minister was just telling me about your lucky escape, Potter,” drawled Mr. Malfoy.

“Quite astonishing, the way you continue to wriggle out of very tight holes. . . . Snakelike, in fact . . .”

Mr. Weasley gripped Harry’s shoulder in warning.

“Yeah,” said Harry, “yeah, I’m good at escaping . . .”

Lucius Malfoy raised his eyes to Mr. Weasley’s face.

“And Arthur Weasley too! What are you doing here, Arthur?”

“I work here,” said Mr. Weasley shortly.

“Not here, surely?” said Mr. Malfoy, raising his eyebrows and glancing toward the door over Mr. Weasley’s shoulder.

“I thought you were up on the second floor. . . . Don’t you do something that involves sneaking Muggle artifacts home and bewitching them?”

“No,” said Mr. Weasley curtly, his fingers now biting into Harry’s shoulder.

“What are you doing here anyway?” Harry asked Lucius Malfoy.

“I don’t think private matters between myself and the Minister are any concern of yours, Potter,” said Malfoy, smoothing the front of his robes.

Harry distinctly heard the gentle clinking of what sounded like a full pocket of gold.

“Really, just because you are Dumbledore’s favorite boy, you must not expect the same indulgence from the rest of us. . . .

Shall we go up to your office, then, Minister?”

“Certainly,” said Fudge, turning his back on Harry and Mr. Weasley.

“This way, Lucius.”

They strode off together, talking in low voices.

Mr. Weasley did not let go of Harry’s shoulder until they had disappeared into the lift.

“Why wasn’t he waiting outside Fudge’s office if they’ve got business to do together?” Harry burst out furiously.

“What was he doing down here?”

“Trying to sneak down to the courtroom, if you ask me,” said Mr. Weasley, looking extremely agitated as he glanced over his shoulder as though making sure they could not be overheard.

“Trying to find out whether you’d been expelled or not.

I’ll leave a note for Dumbledore when I drop you off, he ought to know Malfoy’s been talking to Fudge again.”

“What private business have they got together anyway?”

“Gold, I expect,” said Mr. Weasley angrily.

“Malfoy’s been giving generously to all sorts of things for years. . . .

Gets him in with the right people . . . then he can ask favors . . . delay laws he doesn’t want passed . . .

Oh, he’s very well connected, Lucius Malfoy . . .”

The lift arrived; it was empty except for a flock of memos that flapped around Mr. Weasley’s head as he pressed the button for the Atrium and the doors clanged shut; he waved them away irritably.

“Mr. Weasley,” said Harry slowly, “if Fudge is meeting Death Eaters like Malfoy, if he’s seeing them alone, how do we know they haven’t put the Imperius Curse on him?”

“Don’t think it hadn’t occurred to us, Harry,” muttered Mr. Weasley.

“But Dumbledore thinks Fudge is acting of his own accord at the moment — which, as Dumbledore says, is not a lot of comfort. . . .

Best not talk about it anymore just now, Harry . . .”

The doors slid open and they stepped out into the now almost-deserted Atrium.

Eric the security man was hidden behind his Daily Prophet again.

They had walked straight past the golden fountain before Harry remembered.

“Wait . . .” he told Mr. Weasley, and pulling his money bag from his pocket, he turned back to the fountain.

He looked up into the handsome wizard’s face, but up close, Harry thought he looked rather weak and foolish.

The witch was wearing a vapid smile like a beauty contestant, and from what Harry knew of goblins and centaurs, they were most unlikely to be caught staring this soppily at humans of any description.

Only the house-elf’s attitude of creeping servility looked convincing.

With a grin at the thought of what Hermione would say if she could see the statue of the elf, Harry turned his money bag upside down and emptied not just ten Galleons, but the whole contents into the pool at the statues’ feet.

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“I knew it!” yelled Ron, punching the air.

“You always get away with stuff!”

“They were bound to clear you,” said Hermione, who had looked positively faint with anxiety when Harry had entered the kitchen and was now holding a shaking hand over her eyes.

“There was no case against you, none at all . . .”

“Everyone seems quite relieved, though, considering they all knew I’d get off,” said Harry, smiling.

Mrs. Weasley was wiping her face on her apron, and Fred, George, and Ginny were doing a kind of war dance to a chant that went “He got off, he got off, he got off —”

“That’s enough, settle down!” shouted Mr. Weasley, though he too was smiling.

“Listen, Sirius, Lucius Malfoy was at the Ministry —”

“What?” said Sirius sharply.

“He got off, he got off, he got off —”

“Be quiet, you three!

Yes, we saw him talking to Fudge on level nine, then they went up to Fudge’s office together.

Dumbledore ought to know.”

“Absolutely,” said Sirius.

“We’ll tell him, don’t worry.”

“Well, I’d better get going, there’s a vomiting toilet in Bethnal Green waiting for me.

Molly, I’ll be late, I’m covering for Tonks, but Kingsley might be dropping in for dinner —”

“He got off, he got off, he got off —”

“That’s enough — Fred — George — Ginny!” said Mrs. Weasley, as Mr. Weasley left the kitchen.

“Harry dear, come and sit down, have some lunch, you hardly ate breakfast . . .”

Ron and Hermione sat themselves down opposite him looking happier than they had done since he had first arrived at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and Harry’s feeling of giddy relief, which had been somewhat dented by his encounter with Lucius Malfoy, swelled again.

The gloomy house seemed warmer and more welcoming all of a sudden; even Kreacher looked less ugly as he poked his snoutlike nose into the kitchen to investigate the source of all the noise.

“’Course, once Dumbledore turned up on your side, there was no way they were going to convict you,” said Ron happily, now dishing great mounds of mashed potatoes onto everyone’s plates.

“Yeah, he swung it for me,” said Harry.

He felt that it would sound highly ungrateful, not to mention childish, to say, “I wish he’d talked to me, though. Or even looked at me.”

And as he thought this, the scar on his forehead burned so badly that he clapped his hand to it.

“What’s up?” said Hermione, looking alarmed.

“Scar,” Harry mumbled.

“But it’s nothing. . . . It happens all the time now . . .”

None of the others had noticed a thing; all of them were now helping themselves to food while gloating over Harry’s narrow escape; Fred, George, and Ginny were still singing.

Hermione looked rather anxious, but before she could say anything, Ron said happily, “I bet Dumbledore turns up this evening to celebrate with us, you know.”

“I don’t think he’ll be able to, Ron,” said Mrs. Weasley, setting a huge plate of roast chicken down in front of Harry.

“He’s really very busy at the moment.”

“HE GOT OFF, HE GOT OFF, HE GOT OFF —”

“SHUT UP!” roared Mrs. Weasley.

Over the next few days Harry could not help noticing that there was one person within number twelve, Grimmauld Place, who did not seem wholly overjoyed that he would be returning to Hogwarts.

Sirius had put up a very good show of happiness on first hearing the news, wringing Harry’s hand and beaming just like the rest of them; soon, however, he was moodier and surlier than before, talking less to everybody, even Harry, and spending increasing amounts of time shut up in his mother’s room with Buckbeak.

“Don’t you go feeling guilty!” said Hermione sternly, after Harry had confided some of his feelings to her and Ron while they scrubbed out a moldy cupboard on the third floor a few days later.

“You belong at Hogwarts and Sirius knows it.

Personally, I think he’s being selfish.”

“That’s a bit harsh, Hermione,” said Ron, frowning as he attempted to prise off a bit of mold that had attached itself firmly to his finger, “you wouldn’t want to be stuck inside this house without company.”

“He’ll have company!” said Hermione.

“It’s headquarters to the Order of the Phoenix, isn’t it?

He just got his hopes up that Harry would be coming to live here with him.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Harry, wringing out his cloth.

“He wouldn’t give me a straight answer when I asked him if I could.”

“He just didn’t want to get his own hopes up even more,” said Hermione wisely.

“And he probably felt a bit guilty himself, because I think a part of him was really hoping you’d be expelled.

Then you’d both be outcasts together.”

“Come off it!” said Harry and Ron together, but Hermione merely shrugged.

“Suit yourselves.

But I sometimes think Ron’s mum’s right, and Sirius gets confused about whether you’re you or your father, Harry.”

“So you think he’s touched in the head?” said Harry heatedly.

“No, I just think he’s been very lonely for a long time,” said Hermione simply.

At this point Mrs. Weasley entered the bedroom behind them.

“Still not finished?” she said, poking her head into the cupboard.

“I thought you might be here to tell us to have a break!” said Ron bitterly.

“D’you know how much mold we’ve got rid of since we arrived here?”

“You were so keen to help the Order,” said Mrs. Weasley, “you can do your bit by making headquarters fit to live in.”

“I feel like a house-elf,” grumbled Ron.

“Well, now that you understand what dreadful lives they lead, perhaps you’ll be a bit more active in S.P.E.W.!” said Hermione hopefully, as Mrs. Weasley left them to it again.

“You know, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to show people exactly how horrible it is to clean all the time — we could do a sponsored scrub of Gryffindor common room, all proceeds to S.P.E.W., it would raise awareness as well as funds —”

“I’ll sponsor you to shut up about spew,” Ron muttered irritably, but only so Harry could hear him.

Harry found himself daydreaming about Hogwarts more and more as the end of the holidays approached; he could not wait to see Hagrid again, to play Quidditch, even to stroll across the vegetable patches to the Herbology greenhouses.

It would be a treat just to leave this dusty, musty house, where half of the cupboards were still bolted shut and Kreacher wheezed insults out of the shadows as you passed, though Harry was careful not to say any of this within earshot of Sirius.

The fact was that living at the headquarters of the anti-Voldemort movement was not nearly as interesting or exciting as Harry would have expected before he’d experienced it.

Though members of the Order of the Phoenix came and went regularly, sometimes staying for meals, sometimes only for a few minutes’ whispered conversation, Mrs. Weasley made sure that Harry and the others were kept well out of earshot (whether Extendable or normal) and nobody, not even Sirius, seemed to feel that Harry needed to know anything more than he had heard on the night of his arrival.

On the very last day of the holidays Harry was sweeping up Hedwig’s owl droppings from the top of the wardrobe when Ron entered their bedroom carrying a couple of envelopes.

“Booklists have arrived,” he said, throwing one of the envelopes up to Harry, who was standing on a chair.

“About time, I thought they’d forgotten, they usually come much earlier than this . . .”

Harry swept the last of the droppings into a rubbish bag and threw the bag over Ron’s head into the wastepaper basket in the corner, which swallowed it and belched loudly.

He then opened his letter: It contained two pieces of parchment, one the usual reminder that term started on the first of September, the other telling him which books he would need for the coming year.

“Only two new ones,” he said, reading the list.

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“The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5, by Miranda Goshawk and Defensive Magical Theory, by Wilbert Slinkhard.”

Crack.

Fred and George Apparated right beside Harry.

He was so used to them doing this by now that he didn’t even fall off his chair.

“We were just wondering who assigned the Slinkhard book,” said Fred conversationally.

“Because it means Dumbledore’s found a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher,” said George.

“And about time too,” said Fred.

“What d’you mean?” Harry asked, jumping down beside them.

“Well, we overheard Mum and Dad talking on the Extendable Ears a few weeks back,” Fred told Harry, “and from what they were saying, Dumbledore was having real trouble finding anyone to do the job this year.”

“Not surprising, is it, when you look at what’s happened to the last four?” said George.

“One sacked, one dead, one’s memory removed, and one locked in a trunk for nine months,” said Harry, counting them off on his fingers.

“Yeah, I see what you mean.”

“What’s up with you, Ron?” asked Fred.

Ron did not answer.

Harry looked around.

Ron was standing very still with his mouth slightly open, gaping at his letter from Hogwarts.

“What’s the matter?” said Fred impatiently, moving around Ron to look over his shoulder at the parchment.

Fred’s mouth fell open too.

“Prefect?” he said, staring incredulously at the letter.

“Prefect?”

George leapt forward, seized the envelope in Ron’s other hand, and turned it upside down.

Harry saw something scarlet and gold fall into George’s palm.

“No way,” said George in a hushed voice.

“There’s been a mistake,” said Fred, snatching the letter out of Ron’s grasp and holding it up to the light as though checking for a watermark.

“No one in their right mind would make Ron a prefect . . .”

The twins’ heads turned in unison and both of them stared at Harry.

“We thought you were a cert!” said Fred in a tone that suggested Harry had tricked them in some way.

“We thought Dumbledore was bound to pick you!” said George indignantly.

“Winning the Triwizard and everything!” said Fred.

“I suppose all the mad stuff must’ve counted against him,” said George to Fred.

“Yeah,” said Fred slowly.

“Yeah, you’ve caused too much trouble, mate.

Well, at least one of you’s got their priorities right.”

He strode over to Harry and clapped him on the back while giving Ron a scathing look.

“Prefect . . . ickle Ronnie the prefect . . .”

“Oh, Mum’s going to be revolting,” groaned George, thrusting the prefect badge back at Ron as though it might contaminate him.

Ron, who still had not said a word, took the badge, stared at it for a moment, and then held it out to Harry as though asking mutely for confirmation that it was genuine.

Harry took it.

A large P was superimposed on the Gryffindor lion.

He had seen a badge just like this on Percy’s chest on his very first day at Hogwarts.

The door banged open.

Hermione came tearing into the room, her cheeks flushed and her hair flying.

There was an envelope in her hand.

“Did you — did you get — ?”

She spotted the badge in Harry’s hand and let out a shriek.

“I knew it!” she said excitedly, brandishing her letter. “Me too, Harry, me too!”

“No,” said Harry quickly, pushing the badge back into Ron’s hand. “It’s Ron, not me.”

“It — what?”

“Ron’s prefect, not me,” Harry said.

“Ron?” said Hermione, her jaw dropping. “But . . . are you sure? I mean —”

She turned red as Ron looked around at her with a defiant expression on his face.

“It’s my name on the letter,” he said.

“I . . .” said Hermione, looking thoroughly bewildered. “I . . . well . . . wow! Well done, Ron! That’s really —”

“Unexpected,” said George, nodding.

“No,” said Hermione, blushing harder than ever, “no, it’s not . . . Ron’s done loads of . . . he’s really . . .”

The door behind her opened a little wider and Mrs. Weasley backed into the room carrying a pile of freshly laundered robes.

“Ginny said the booklists had come at last,” she said, glancing around at all the envelopes as she made her way over to the bed and started sorting the robes into two piles. “If you give them to me I’ll take them over to Diagon Alley this afternoon and get your books while you’re packing. Ron, I’ll have to get you more pajamas, these are at least six inches too short, I can’t believe how fast you’re growing . . . what color would you like?”

“Get him red and gold to match his badge,” said George, smirking.

“Match his what?” said Mrs. Weasley absently, rolling up a pair of maroon socks and placing them on Ron’s pile.

“His badge,” said Fred, with the air of getting the worst over quickly. “His lovely shiny new prefect’s badge.”

Fred’s words took a moment to penetrate Mrs. Weasley’s preoccupation about pajamas.

“His . . . but . . . Ron, you’re not . . . ?”

Ron held up his badge.

Mrs. Weasley let out a shriek just like Hermione’s.

“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Oh, Ron, how wonderful! A prefect! That’s everyone in the family!”

“What are Fred and I, next-door neighbors?” said George indignantly, as his mother pushed him aside and flung her arms around her youngest son.

“Wait until your father hears! Ron, I’m so proud of you, what wonderful news, you could end up Head Boy just like Bill and Percy, it’s the first step! Oh, what a thing to happen in the middle of all this worry, I’m just thrilled, oh Ronnie —”

Fred and George were both making loud retching noises behind her back but Mrs. Weasley did not notice; arms tight around Ron’s neck, she was kissing him all over his face, which had turned a brighter scarlet than his badge.

“Mum . . . don’t . . . Mum, get a grip . . .” he muttered, trying to push her away.

She let go of him and said breathlessly, “Well, what will it be? We gave Percy an owl, but you’ve already got one, of course.”

“W-what do you mean?” said Ron, looking as though he did not dare believe his ears.

“You’ve got to have a reward for this!” said Mrs. Weasley fondly. “How about a nice new set of dress robes?”

“We’ve already bought him some,” said Fred sourly, who looked as though he sincerely regretted this generosity.

“Or a new cauldron, Charlie’s old one’s rusting through, or a new rat, you always liked Scabbers —”

“Mum,” said Ron hopefully, “can I have a new broom?”

Mrs. Weasley’s face fell slightly; broomsticks were expensive.

“Not a really good one!” Ron hastened to add. “Just — just a new one for a change . . .”

Mrs. Weasley hesitated, then smiled.

“Of course you can. . . . Well, I’d better get going if I’ve got a broom to buy too. I’ll see you all later. . . . Little Ronnie, a prefect! And don’t forget to pack your trunks. . . . A prefect . . . Oh, I’m all of a dither!”

She gave Ron yet another kiss on the cheek, sniffed loudly, and bustled from the room.

Fred and George exchanged looks.

“You don’t mind if we don’t kiss you, do you, Ron?” said Fred in a falsely anxious voice.

“We could curtsy, if you like,” said George.

“Oh, shut up,” said Ron, scowling at them.

“Or what?” said Fred, an evil grin spreading across his face. “Going to put us in detention?”

“I’d love to see him try,” sniggered George.

“He could if you don’t watch out!” said Hermione angrily, at which Fred and George burst out laughing and Ron muttered, “Drop it, Hermione.”

“We’re going to have to watch our step, George,” said Fred, pretending to tremble, “with these two on our case . . .”

“Yeah, it looks like our law-breaking days are finally over,” said George, shaking his head.

And with another loud crack, the twins Disapparated.

“Those two!” said Hermione furiously, staring up at the ceiling, through which they could now hear Fred and George roaring with laughter in the room upstairs. “Don’t pay any attention to them, Ron, they’re only jealous!”

“I don’t think they are,” said Ron doubtfully, also looking up at the ceiling. “They’ve always said only prats become prefects. . . . Still,” he added on a happier note, “they’ve never had new brooms! I wish I could go with Mum and choose. . . . She’ll never be able to afford a Nimbus, but there’s the new Cleansweep out, that’d be great. . . . Yeah, I think I’ll go and tell her I like the Cleansweep, just so she knows . . .”

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He dashed from the room, leaving Harry and Hermione alone.

For some reason, Harry found that he did not want to look at Hermione.

He turned to his bed, picked up the pile of clean robes Mrs. Weasley had laid upon it, and crossed the room to his trunk.

“Harry?” said Hermione tentatively.

“Well done,” said Harry, so heartily it did not sound like his voice at all, and still not looking at her. “Brilliant. Prefect. Great.”

“Thanks,” said Hermione. “Erm — Harry — could I borrow Hedwig so I can tell Mum and Dad? They’ll be really pleased — I mean, prefect is something they can understand —”

“Yeah, no problem,” said Harry, still in the horrible hearty voice that did not belong to him. “Take her!”

He leaned over his trunk, laid the robes on the bottom of it, and pretended to be rummaging for something while Hermione crossed to the wardrobe and called Hedwig down.

A few moments passed; Harry heard the door close but remained bent double, listening; the only sounds he could hear were the blank picture on the wall sniggering again and the wastepaper basket in the corner coughing up the owl droppings.

He straightened up and looked behind him.

Hermione and Hedwig had gone.

Harry returned slowly to his bed and sank onto it, gazing unseeingly at the foot of the wardrobe.

He had forgotten completely about prefects being chosen in the fifth year.

He had been too anxious about the possibility of being expelled to spare a thought for the fact that badges must be winging their way toward certain people.

But if he had remembered . . . if he had thought about it . . . what would he have expected?

Not this, said a small and truthful voice inside his head.

Harry screwed up his face and buried it in his hands.

He could not lie to himself; if he had known the prefect badge was on its way, he would have expected it to come to him, not Ron.

Did this make him as arrogant as Draco Malfoy?

Did he think himself superior to everyone else?

Did he really believe he was better than Ron?

No, said the small voice defiantly.

Was that true? Harry wondered, anxiously probing his own feelings.

I’m better at Quidditch, said the voice.

But I’m not better at anything else.

That was definitely true, Harry thought; he was no better than Ron in lessons.

But what about outside lessons?

What about those adventures he, Ron, and Hermione had had together since they had started at Hogwarts, often risking much worse than expulsion?

Well, Ron and Hermione were with me most of the time, said the voice in Harry’s head.

Not all the time, though, Harry argued with himself.

They didn’t fight Quirrell with me.

They didn’t take on Riddle and the basilisk.

They didn’t get rid of all those dementors the night Sirius escaped.

They weren’t in that graveyard with me, the night Voldemort returned. . . .

And the same feeling of ill usage that had overwhelmed him on the night he had arrived rose again.

I’ve definitely done more, Harry thought indignantly.

I’ve done more than either of them!

But maybe, said the small voice fairly, maybe Dumbledore doesn’t choose prefects because they’ve got themselves into a load of dangerous situations.

Maybe he chooses them for other reasons.

Ron must have something you don’t.

Harry opened his eyes and stared through his fingers at the wardrobe’s clawed feet, remembering what Fred had said.

“No one in their right mind would make Ron a prefect.”

Harry gave a small snort of laughter.

A second later he felt sickened with himself.

Ron had not asked Dumbledore to give him the prefect badge.

This was not Ron’s fault.

Was he, Harry, Ron’s best friend in the world, going to sulk because he didn’t have a badge, laugh with the twins behind Ron’s back, ruin this for Ron when, for the first time, he had beaten Harry at something?

At this point Harry heard Ron’s footsteps on the stairs again.

He stood up, straightened his glasses, and hitched a grin onto his face as Ron bounded back through the door.

“Just caught her!” he said happily.

“She says she’ll get the Cleansweep if she can.”

“Cool,” Harry said, and he was relieved to hear that his voice had stopped sounding hearty.

“Listen — Ron — well done, mate.”

The smile faded off Ron’s face.

“I never thought it would be me!” he said, shaking his head.

“I thought it would be you!”

“Nah, I’ve caused too much trouble,” Harry said, echoing Fred.

“Yeah,” said Ron.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Well, we’d better get our trunks packed, hadn’t we?”

It was odd how widely their possessions seemed to have scattered themselves since they had arrived.

It took them most of the afternoon to retrieve their books and belongings from all over the house and stow them back inside their school trunks.

Harry noticed that Ron kept moving his prefect’s badge around, first placing it on his bedside table, then putting it into his jeans pocket, then taking it out and laying it on his folded robes, as though to see the effect of the red on the black.

Only when Fred and George dropped in and offered to attach it to his forehead with a Permanent Sticking Charm did he wrap it tenderly in his maroon socks and lock it in his trunk.

Mrs. Weasley returned from Diagon Alley around six o’clock, laden with books and carrying a long package wrapped in thick brown paper that Ron took from her with a moan of longing.

“Never mind unwrapping it now, people are arriving for dinner, I want you all downstairs,” she said, but the moment she was out of sight Ron ripped off the paper in a frenzy and examined every inch of his new broom, an ecstatic expression on his face.

Down in the basement Mrs. Weasley had hung a scarlet banner over the heavily laden dinner table, which read CONGRATULATIONS RON AND HERMIONE — NEW PREFECTS.

She looked in a better mood than Harry had seen her all holiday.

“I thought we’d have a little party, not a sit-down dinner,” she told Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Ginny as they entered the room.

“Your father and Bill are on their way, Ron, I’ve sent them both owls and they’re thrilled,” she added, beaming.

Fred rolled his eyes.

Sirius, Lupin, Tonks, and Kingsley Shacklebolt were already there and Mad-Eye Moody stumped in shortly after Harry had got himself a butterbeer.

“Oh, Alastor, I am glad you’re here,” said Mrs. Weasley brightly, as Mad-Eye shrugged off his traveling cloak.

“We’ve been wanting to ask you for ages — could you have a look in the writing desk in the drawing room and tell us what’s inside it?”

“We haven’t wanted to open it just in case it’s something really nasty.”

“No problem, Molly.”

Moody’s electric-blue eye swiveled upward and stared fixedly through the ceiling of the kitchen.

“Drawing room.”

He growled, as the pupil contracted.

“Desk in the corner? Yeah, I see it.”

“Yeah, it’s a boggart.”

“Want me to go up and get rid of it, Molly?”

“No, no, I’ll do it myself later,” beamed Mrs. Weasley.

“You have your drink.”

“We’re having a little bit of a celebration, actually.”

She gestured at the scarlet banner.

“Fourth prefect in the family!” she said fondly, ruffling Ron’s hair.

“Prefect, eh?” growled Moody, his normal eye on Ron and his magical eye swiveling around to gaze into the side of his head.

Harry had the very uncomfortable feeling it was looking at him and moved away toward Sirius and Lupin.

“Well, congratulations,” said Moody, still glaring at Ron with his normal eye.

“Authority figures always attract trouble, but I suppose Dumbledore thinks you can withstand most major jinxes or he wouldn’t have appointed you.”

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Ron looked rather startled at this view of the matter but was saved the trouble of responding by the arrival of his father and eldest brother.

Mrs. Weasley was in such a good mood she did not even complain that they had brought Mundungus with them too.

He was wearing a long overcoat that seemed oddly lumpy in unlikely places and declined the offer to remove it and put it with Moody’s traveling cloak.

“Well, I think a toast is in order,” said Mr. Weasley, when everyone had a drink.

He raised his goblet.

“To Ron and Hermione, the new Gryffindor prefects!”

Ron and Hermione beamed as everyone drank to them and then applauded.

“I was never a prefect myself,” said Tonks brightly from behind Harry as everybody moved toward the table to help themselves to food.

Her hair was tomato-red and waist length today; she looked like Ginny’s older sister.

“My Head of House said I lacked certain necessary qualities.”

“Like what?” said Ginny, who was choosing a baked potato.

“Like the ability to behave myself,” said Tonks.

Ginny laughed.

Hermione looked as though she did not know whether to smile or not and compromised by taking an extra large gulp of butterbeer and choking on it.

“What about you, Sirius?” Ginny asked, thumping Hermione on the back.

Sirius, who was right beside Harry, let out his usual barklike laugh.

“No one would have made me a prefect, I spent too much time in detention with James.”

“Lupin was the good boy, he got the badge.”

“I think Dumbledore might have hoped that I would be able to exercise some control over my best friends,” said Lupin.

“I need scarcely say that I failed dismally.”

Harry’s mood suddenly lifted.

His father had not been a prefect either.

All at once the party seemed much more enjoyable.

He loaded up his plate, feeling unusually fond of everyone in the room.

Ron was rhapsodizing about his new broom to anybody who would listen.

“Naught to seventy in ten seconds, not bad, is it?”

“When you think the Comet Two Ninety’s only naught to sixty and that’s with a decent tailwind according to Which Broomstick?”

Hermione was talking very earnestly to Lupin about her view of elf rights.

“I mean, it’s the same kind of nonsense as werewolf segregation, isn’t it?”

“It all stems from this horrible thing wizards have of thinking they’re superior to other creatures.”

Mrs. Weasley and Bill were having their usual argument about Bill’s hair.

“. . . getting really out of hand, and you’re so good-looking, it would look much better shorter, wouldn’t it, Harry?”

“Oh — I dunno,” said Harry, slightly alarmed at being asked his opinion.

He slid away from them in the direction of Fred and George, who were huddled in a corner with Mundungus.

Mundungus stopped talking when he saw Harry, but Fred winked and beckoned Harry closer.

“It’s okay,” he told Mundungus, “we can trust Harry, he’s our financial backer.”

“Look what Dung’s gotten us,” said George, holding out his hand to Harry.

It was full of what looked like shriveled black pods.

A faint rattling noise was coming from them, even though they were completely stationary.

“Venomous Tentacula seeds,” said George.

“We need them for the Skiving Snackboxes but they’re a Class C Non-Tradeable Substance so we’ve been having a bit of trouble getting hold of them.”

“Ten Galleons the lot, then, Dung?” said Fred.

“Wiv all the trouble I went to to get ’em?” said Mundungus, his saggy, bloodshot eyes stretching even wider.

“I’m sorry, lads, but I’m not taking a Knut under twenty.”

“Dung likes his little joke,” Fred said to Harry.

“Yeah, his best one so far has been six Sickles for a bag of knarl quills,” said George.

“Be careful,” Harry warned them quietly.

“What?” said Fred.

“Mum’s busy cooing over Prefect Ron, we’re okay.”

“But Moody could have his eye on you,” Harry pointed out.

Mundungus looked nervously over his shoulder.

“Good point, that,” he grunted.

“All right, lads, ten it is, if you’ll take ’em quick.”

“Cheers, Harry!” said Fred delightedly, when Mundungus had emptied his pockets into the twins’ outstretched hands and scuttled off toward the food.

“We’d better get these upstairs.”

Harry watched them go, feeling slightly uneasy.

It had just occurred to him that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley would want to know how Fred and George were financing their joke shop business when, as was inevitable, they finally found out about it.

Giving the twins his Triwizard winnings had seemed a simple thing to do at the time, but what if it led to another family row and a Percy-like estrangement?

Would Mrs. Weasley still feel that Harry was as good as her son if she found out he had made it possible for Fred and George to start a career she thought quite unsuitable?

Standing where the twins had left him with nothing but a guilty weight in the pit of his stomach for company, Harry caught the sound of his own name.

Kingsley Shacklebolt’s deep voice was audible even over the surrounding chatter.

“. . . why Dumbledore didn’t make Potter a prefect?” said Kingsley.

“He’ll have had his reasons,” replied Lupin.

“But it would’ve shown confidence in him. It’s what I’d’ve done,” persisted Kingsley, “’specially with the Daily Prophet having a go at him every few days . . .”

Harry did not look around; he did not want Lupin or Kingsley to know he had heard.

He followed Mundungus back toward the table, though not remotely hungry.

His pleasure in the party had evaporated as quickly as it had come; he wished he were upstairs in bed.

Mad-Eye Moody was sniffing at a chicken leg with what remained of his nose; evidently he could not detect any trace of poison, because he then tore a strip off it with his teeth.

“. . . the handle’s made of Spanish oak with anti-jinx varnish and in-built vibration control —” Ron was saying to Tonks.

Mrs. Weasley yawned widely.

“Well, I think I’ll sort out that boggart before I turn in. . . . Arthur, I don’t want this lot up too late, all right? ’Night, Harry, dear.”

She left the kitchen.

Harry set down his plate and wondered whether he could follow her without attracting attention.

“You all right, Potter?” grunted Moody.

“Yeah, fine,” lied Harry.

Moody took a swig from his hip flask, his electric blue eye staring sideways at Harry.

“Come here, I’ve got something that might interest you,” he said.

From an inner pocket of his robes Moody pulled a very tattered old Wizarding photograph.

“Original Order of the Phoenix,” growled Moody.

“Found it last night when I was looking for my spare Invisibility Cloak, seeing as Podmore hasn’t had the manners to return my best one. . . . Thought people might like to see it.”

Harry took the photograph.

A small crowd of people, some waving at him, others lifting their glasses, looked back up at him.

“There’s me,” said Moody unnecessarily, pointing at himself.

The Moody in the picture was unmistakable, though his hair was slightly less gray and his nose was intact.

“And there’s Dumbledore beside me, Dedalus Diggle on the other side . . . That’s Marlene McKinnon, she was killed two weeks after this was taken, they got her whole family.

That’s Frank and Alice Longbottom —”

Harry’s stomach, already uncomfortable, clenched as he looked at Alice Longbottom; he knew her round, friendly face very well, even though he had never met her, because she was the image of her son, Neville.

“Poor devils,” growled Moody.

“Better dead than what happened to them . . . and that’s Emmeline Vance, you’ve met her, and that there’s Lupin, obviously . . . Benjy Fenwick, he copped it too, we only ever found bits of him . . . shift aside there,” he added, poking the picture, and the little photographic people edged sideways, so that those who were partially obscured could move to the front.

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“That’s Edgar Bones . . . brother of Amelia Bones, they got him and his family too, he was a great wizard . . . Sturgis Podmore, blimey, he looks young . . . Caradoc Dearborn, vanished six months after this, we never found his body . . . Hagrid, of course, looks exactly the same as ever . . . Elphias Doge, you’ve met him, I’d forgotten he used to wear that stupid hat . . . Gideon Prewett, it took five Death Eaters to kill him and his brother Fabian, they fought like heroes . . . budge along, budge along . . .”

The little people in the photograph jostled among themselves, and those hidden right at the back appeared at the forefront of the picture.

“That’s Dumbledore’s brother, Aberforth, only time I ever met him, strange bloke . . . That’s Dorcas Meadowes, Voldemort killed her personally . . . Sirius, when he still had short hair . . . and . . . there you go, thought that would interest you!”

Harry’s heart turned over.

His mother and father were beaming up at him, sitting on either side of a small, watery-eyed man Harry recognized at once as Wormtail: He was the one who had betrayed their whereabouts to Voldemort and so helped bring about their deaths.

“Eh?” said Moody.

Harry looked up into Moody’s heavily scarred and pitted face.

Evidently Moody was under the impression he had just given Harry a bit of a treat.

“Yeah,” said Harry, attempting to grin again.

“Er . . . listen, I’ve just remembered, I haven’t packed my . . .”

He was spared the trouble of inventing an object he had not packed; Sirius had just said, “What’s that you’ve got there, Mad-Eye?” and Moody had turned toward him.

Harry crossed the kitchen, slipped through the door and up the stairs before anyone could call him back.

He did not know why he had received such a shock; he had seen his parents’ pictures before, after all, and he had met Wormtail . . . but to have them sprung on him like that, when he was least expecting it . . .

No one would like that, he thought angrily. . . .

And then, to see them surrounded by all those other happy faces . . .

Benjy Fenwick, who had been found in bits, and Gideon Prewett, who had died like a hero, and the Longbottoms, who had been tortured into madness . . .

All waving happily out of the photograph forevermore, not knowing that they were doomed. . . .

Well, Moody might find that interesting . . .

He, Harry, found it disturbing. . . .

Harry tiptoed up the stairs in the hall past the stuffed elf heads, glad to be on his own again, but as he approached the first landing he heard noises.

Someone was sobbing in the drawing room.

“Hello?” Harry said.

There was no answer but the sobbing continued.

He climbed the remaining stairs two at a time, walked across the landing, and opened the drawing-room door.

Someone was cowering against the dark wall, her wand in her hand, her whole body shaking with sobs.

Sprawled on the dusty old carpet in a patch of moonlight, clearly dead, was Ron.

All the air seemed to vanish from Harry’s lungs; he felt as though he were falling through the floor; his brain turned icy cold — Ron dead, no, it couldn’t be —

But wait a moment, it couldn’t be — Ron was downstairs —

“Mrs. Weasley?” Harry croaked.

“R-r-riddikulus!” Mrs. Weasley sobbed, pointing her shaking wand at Ron’s body.

Crack.

Ron’s body turned into Bill’s, spread-eagled on his back, his eyes wide open and empty.

Mrs. Weasley sobbed harder than ever.

“R-riddikulus!” she sobbed again.

Crack.

Mr. Weasley’s body replaced Bill’s, his glasses askew, a trickle of blood running down his face.

“No!” Mrs. Weasley moaned.

“No . . . riddikulus! Riddikulus! RIDDIKULUS!”

Crack.

Dead twins.

Crack.

Dead Percy.

Crack.

Dead Harry . . .

“Mrs. Weasley, just get out of here!” shouted Harry, staring down at his own dead body on the floor.

“Let someone else —”

“What’s going on?”

Lupin had come running into the room, closely followed by Sirius, with Moody stumping along behind them.

Lupin looked from Mrs. Weasley to the dead Harry on the floor and seemed to understand in an instant.

Pulling out his own wand he said, very firmly and clearly, “Riddikulus!”

Harry’s body vanished.

A silvery orb hung in the air over the spot where it had lain.

Lupin waved his wand once more and the orb vanished in a puff of smoke.

“Oh — oh — oh!” gulped Mrs. Weasley, and she broke into a storm of crying, her face in her hands.

“Molly,” said Lupin bleakly, walking over to her, “Molly, don’t . . .”

Next second she was sobbing her heart out on Lupin’s shoulder.

“Molly, it was just a boggart,” he said soothingly, patting her on the head.

“Just a stupid boggart . . .”

“I see them d-d-dead all the time!” Mrs. Weasley moaned into his shoulder.

“All the t-t-time! I d-d-dream about it . . .”

Sirius was staring at the patch of carpet where the boggart, pretending to be Harry’s body, had lain.

Moody was looking at Harry, who avoided his gaze.

He had a funny feeling Moody’s magical eye had followed him all the way out of the kitchen.

“D-d-don’t tell Arthur,” Mrs. Weasley was gulping now, mopping her eyes frantically with her cuffs.

“I d-d-don’t want him to know. . . . Being silly . . .”

Lupin handed her a handkerchief and she blew her nose.

“Harry, I’m so sorry, what must you think of me?” she said shakily.

“Not even able to get rid of a boggart . . .”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Harry, trying to smile.

“I’m just s-s-so worried,” she said, tears spilling out of her eyes again.

“Half the f-f-family’s in the Order, it’ll b-b-be a miracle if we all come through this. . . .

And P-P-Percy’s not talking to us. . . .

What if something d-d-dreadful happens and we had never m-m-made up?

And what’s going to happen if Arthur and I get killed, who’s g-g-going to look after Ron and Ginny?”

“Molly, that’s enough,” said Lupin firmly.

“This isn’t like last time.

The Order is better prepared, we’ve got a head start, we know what Voldemort’s up to —”

Mrs. Weasley gave a little squeak of fright at the sound of the name.

“Oh, Molly, come on, it’s about time you got used to hearing it — look, I can’t promise no one’s going to get hurt, nobody can promise that, but we’re much better off than we were last time, you weren’t in the Order then, you don’t understand, last time we were outnumbered twenty to one by the Death Eaters and they were picking us off one by one . . .”

Harry thought of the photograph again, of his parents’ beaming faces.

He knew Moody was still watching him.

“Don’t worry about Percy,” said Sirius abruptly.

“He’ll come round.

It’s a matter of time before Voldemort moves into the open; once he does, the whole Ministry’s going to be begging us to forgive them.

And I’m not sure I’ll be accepting their apology,” he added bitterly.

“And as for who’s going to look after Ron and Ginny if you and Arthur died,” said Lupin, smiling slightly, “what do you think we’d do, let them starve?”

Mrs. Weasley smiled tremulously.

“Being silly,” she muttered again, mopping her eyes.

But Harry, closing his bedroom door behind him some ten minutes later, could not think Mrs. Weasley silly.

He could still see his parents beaming up at him from the tattered old photograph, unaware that their lives, like so many of those around them, were drawing to a close.

The image of the boggart posing as the corpse of each member of Mrs. Weasley’s family in turn kept flashing before his eyes.

Without warning, the scar on his forehead seared with pain again and his stomach churned horribly.

“Cut it out,” he said firmly, rubbing the scar as the pain receded again.

“First sign of madness, talking to your own head,” said a sly voice from the empty picture on the wall.

Harry ignored it.

He felt older than he had ever felt in his life, and it seemed extraordinary to him that barely an hour ago he had been worried about a joke shop and who had gotten a prefect’s badge.

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CHAPTER X. LUNA LOVEGOOD

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Harry had a troubled night’s sleep.

His parents wove in and out of his dreams, never speaking.

Mrs. Weasley sobbed over Kreacher’s dead body watched by Ron and Hermione, who were wearing crowns.

Yet again Harry found himself walking down a corridor ending in a locked door.

He awoke abruptly with his scar prickling to find Ron already dressed and talking to him.

“. . . better hurry up, Mum’s going ballistic, she says we’re going to miss the train . . .”

There was a lot of commotion in the house.

From what he heard as he dressed at top speed, Harry gathered that Fred and George had bewitched their trunks to fly downstairs to save the bother of carrying them.

The result was that they had hurtled straight into Ginny and knocked her down two flights of stairs into the hall.

Mrs. Black and Mrs. Weasley were both screaming at the top of their voices.

“— COULD HAVE DONE HER A SERIOUS INJURY, YOU IDIOTS —”

“— FILTHY HALF-BREEDS, BESMIRCHING THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS —”

Hermione came hurrying into the room looking flustered just as Harry was putting on his trainers.

Hedwig was swaying on her shoulder, and she was carrying a squirming Crookshanks in her arms.

“Mum and Dad just sent Hedwig back.”

The owl fluttered obligingly over and perched on top of her cage.

“Are you ready yet?”

“Nearly — Ginny all right?” Harry asked, shoving on his glasses.

“Mrs. Weasley’s patched her up,” said Hermione.

“But now Mad-Eye’s complaining that we can’t leave unless Sturgis Podmore’s here, otherwise the guard will be one short.”

“Guard?” said Harry.

“We have to go to King’s Cross with a guard?”

“You have to go to King’s Cross with a guard,” Hermione corrected him.

“Why?” said Harry irritably.

“I thought Voldemort was supposed to be lying low, or are you telling me he’s going to jump out from behind a dustbin to try and do me in?”

“I don’t know, it’s just what Mad-Eye says,” said Hermione distractedly, looking at her watch.

“But if we don’t leave soon we’re definitely going to miss the train . . .”

“WILL YOU LOT GET DOWN HERE NOW, PLEASE!” Mrs. Weasley bellowed.

Hermione jumped as though scalded and hurried out of the room.

Harry seized Hedwig, stuffed her unceremoniously into her cage, and set off downstairs after Hermione, dragging his trunk.

Mrs. Black’s portrait was howling with rage but nobody was bothering to close the curtains over her.

All the noise in the hall was bound to rouse her again anyway.

“Harry, you’re to come with me and Tonks,” shouted Mrs. Weasley over the repeated screeches of “MUDBLOODS! SCUM! CREATURES OF DIRT!”

“Leave your trunk and your owl, Alastor’s going to deal with the luggage. . . .

Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sirius, Dumbledore said no!”

A bearlike black dog had appeared at Harry’s side as Harry clambered over the various trunks cluttering the hall to get to Mrs. Weasley.

“Oh honestly . . .” said Mrs. Weasley despairingly.

“Well, on your own head be it!”

She wrenched open the front door and stepped out into the weak September sunlight.

Harry and the dog followed her.

The door slammed behind them and Mrs. Black’s screeches were cut off instantly.

“Where’s Tonks?” Harry said, looking around as they went down the stone steps of number twelve, which vanished the moment they reached the pavement.

“She’s waiting for us just up here,” said Mrs. Weasley stiffly, averting her eyes from the lolloping black dog beside Harry.

An old woman greeted them on the corner.

She had tightly curled gray hair and wore a purple hat shaped like a porkpie.

“Wotcher, Harry,” she said, winking.

“Better hurry up, hadn’t we, Molly?” she added, checking her watch.

“I know, I know,” moaned Mrs. Weasley, lengthening her stride.

“But Mad-Eye wanted to wait for Sturgis. . . .

If only Arthur could have got us cars from the Ministry again . . .

But Fudge wouldn’t let him borrow so much as an empty ink bottle these days. . . .

How Muggles can stand traveling without magic . . .”

But the great black dog gave a joyful bark and gamboled around them, snapping at pigeons, and chasing its own tail.

Harry couldn’t help laughing.

Sirius had been trapped inside for a very long time.

Mrs. Weasley pursed her lips in an almost Aunt Petunia-ish way.

It took them twenty minutes to reach King’s Cross by foot and nothing more eventful happened during that time than Sirius scaring a couple of cats for Harry’s entertainment.

Once inside the station they lingered casually beside the barrier between platforms nine and ten until the coast was clear.

Then each of them leaned against it in turn and fell easily through onto platform nine and three quarters, where the Hogwarts Express stood belching sooty steam over a platform packed with departing students and their families.

Harry inhaled the familiar smell and felt his spirits soar. . . .

He was really going back. . . .

“I hope the others make it in time,” said Mrs. Weasley anxiously, staring behind her at the wrought-iron arch spanning the platform, through which new arrivals would come.

“Nice dog, Harry!” called a tall boy with dreadlocks.

“Thanks, Lee,” said Harry, grinning, as Sirius wagged his tail frantically.

“Oh good,” said Mrs. Weasley, sounding relieved.

“Here’s Alastor with the luggage, look . . .”

A porter’s cap pulled low over his mismatched eyes, Moody came limping through the archway pushing a cart full of their trunks.

“All okay,” he muttered to Mrs. Weasley and Tonks.

“Don’t think we were followed . . .”

Seconds later, Mr. Weasley emerged onto the platform with Ron and Hermione.

They had almost unloaded Moody’s luggage cart when Fred, George, and Ginny turned up with Lupin.

“No trouble?” growled Moody.

“Nothing,” said Lupin.

“I’ll still be reporting Sturgis to Dumbledore,” said Moody.

“That’s the second time he’s not turned up in a week.

Getting as unreliable as Mundungus.”

“Well, look after yourselves,” said Lupin, shaking hands all round.

He reached Harry last and gave him a clap on the shoulder.

“You too, Harry.

Be careful.”

“Yeah, keep your head down and your eyes peeled,” said Moody, shaking Harry’s hand too.

“And don’t forget, all of you — careful what you put in writing.

If in doubt, don’t put it in a letter at all.”

“It’s been great meeting all of you,” said Tonks, hugging Hermione and Ginny.

“We’ll see you soon, I expect.”

A warning whistle sounded.

The students still on the platform started hurrying onto the train.

“Quick, quick,” said Mrs. Weasley distractedly, hugging them at random and catching Harry twice.

“Write . . .

Be good. . . .

If you’ve forgotten anything we’ll send it on. . . .

Onto the train, now, hurry . . .”

For one brief moment, the great black dog reared onto its hind legs and placed its front paws on Harry’s shoulders.

But Mrs. Weasley shoved Harry away toward the train door hissing, “For heaven’s sake act more like a dog, Sirius!”

“See you!” Harry called out of the open window as the train began to move, while Ron, Hermione, and Ginny waved beside him.

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The figures of Tonks, Lupin, Moody, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley shrank rapidly but the black dog was bounding alongside the window, wagging its tail.

Blurred people on the platform were laughing to see it chasing the train, and then they turned the corner, and Sirius was gone.

“He shouldn’t have come with us,” said Hermione in a worried voice.

“Oh lighten up,” said Ron.

“He hasn’t seen daylight for months, poor bloke.”

“Well,” said Fred, clapping his hands together.

“Can’t stand around chatting all day, we’ve got business to discuss with Lee.

See you later,” and he and George disappeared down the corridor to the right.

The train was gathering still more speed, so that the houses outside the window flashed past and they swayed where they stood.

“Shall we go and find a compartment, then?” Harry asked Ron and Hermione.

Ron and Hermione exchanged looks.

“Er,” said Ron.

“We’re — well — Ron and I are supposed to go into the prefect carriage,” Hermione said awkwardly.

Ron wasn’t looking at Harry.

He seemed to have become intensely interested in the fingernails on his left hand.

“Oh,” said Harry. “Right. Fine.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to stay there all journey,” said Hermione quickly.

“Our letters said we just get instructions from the Head Boy and Girl and then patrol the corridors from time to time.”

“Fine,” said Harry again.

“Well, I-I might see you later, then.”

“Yeah, definitely,” said Ron, casting a shifty, anxious look at Harry.

“It’s a pain having to go down there, I’d rather — but we have to — I mean, I’m not enjoying it, I’m not Percy,” he finished defiantly.

“I know you’re not,” said Harry, and he grinned.

But as Hermione and Ron dragged their trunks, Crookshanks, and a caged Pigwidgeon off toward the engine end of the train, Harry felt an odd sense of loss.

He had never traveled on the Hogwarts Express without Ron.

“Come on,” Ginny told him, “if we get a move on we’ll be able to save them places.”

“Right,” said Harry, picking up Hedwig’s cage in one hand and the handle of his trunk in the other.

They struggled off down the corridor, peering through the glass-paneled doors into the compartments they passed, which were already full.

Harry could not help noticing that a lot of people stared back at him with great interest and that several of them nudged their neighbors and pointed him out.

After he had met this behavior in five consecutive carriages, he remembered that the Daily Prophet had been telling its readers all summer what a lying show-off he was.

He wondered bleakly whether the people now staring and whispering believed the stories.

In the very last carriage, they met Neville Longbottom, Harry’s fellow fifth-year Gryffindor, his round face shining with the effort of pulling his trunk along and maintaining a one-handed grip on his struggling toad, Trevor.

“Hi, Harry,” he panted.

“Hi, Ginny. . . . Everywhere’s full. . . . I can’t find a seat . . .”

“What are you talking about?” said Ginny, who had squeezed past Neville to peer into the compartment behind him.

“There’s room in this one, there’s only Loony Lovegood in here —”

Neville mumbled something about not wanting to disturb anyone.

“Don’t be silly,” said Ginny, laughing, “she’s all right.”

She slid the door open and pulled her trunk inside it.

Harry and Neville followed.

“Hi, Luna,” said Ginny.

“Is it okay if we take these seats?”

The girl beside the window looked up.

She had straggly, waist-length, dirty-blond hair, very pale eyebrows, and protuberant eyes that gave her a permanently surprised look.

Harry knew at once why Neville had chosen to pass this compartment by.

The girl gave off an aura of distinct dottiness.

Perhaps it was the fact that she had stuck her wand behind her left ear for safekeeping, or that she had chosen to wear a necklace of butterbeer caps, or that she was reading a magazine upside down.

Her eyes ranged over Neville and came to rest on Harry.

She nodded.

“Thanks,” said Ginny, smiling at her.

Harry and Neville stowed the three trunks and Hedwig’s cage in the luggage rack and sat down.

The girl called Luna watched them over her upside-down magazine, which was called The Quibbler.

She did not seem to need to blink as much as normal humans.

She stared and stared at Harry, who had taken the seat opposite her and now wished he had not.

“Had a good summer, Luna?” Ginny asked.

“Yes,” said Luna dreamily, without taking her eyes off Harry.

“Yes, it was quite enjoyable, you know. You’re Harry Potter,” she added.

“I know I am,” said Harry.

Neville chuckled.

Luna turned her pale eyes upon him instead.

“And I don’t know who you are.”

“I’m nobody,” said Neville hurriedly.

“No, you’re not,” said Ginny sharply.

“Neville Longbottom — Luna Lovegood. Luna’s in my year, but in Ravenclaw.”

“Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure,” said Luna in a sing-song voice.

She raised her upside-down magazine high enough to hide her face and fell silent.

Harry and Neville looked at each other with their eyebrows raised.

Ginny suppressed a giggle.

The train rattled onward, speeding them out into open country.

It was an odd, unsettled sort of day; one moment the carriage was full of sunlight and the next they were passing beneath ominously gray clouds.

“Guess what I got for my birthday?” said Neville.

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

“No,” said Neville.

“I could do with one, though, I lost the old one ages ago. . . . No, look at this . . .”

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

“Mimbulus mimbletonia,” he said proudly.

Harry stared at the thing.

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

“It’s really, really rare,” said Neville, beaming.

“I don’t know if there’s one in the greenhouse at Hogwarts, even.”

“I can’t wait to show it to Professor Sprout.”

“My great-uncle Algie got it for me in Assyria.”

“I’m going to see if I can breed from it.”

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

“Does it — er — do anything?” he asked.

“Loads of stuff!” said Neville proudly.

“It’s got an amazing defensive mechanism — hold Trevor for me . . .”

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

Luna Lovegood’s popping eyes appeared over the top of her upside-down magazine again, watching what Neville was doing.

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Neville held the Mimbulus mimbletonia up to his eyes, his tongue between his teeth, chose his spot, and gave the plant a sharp prod with the tip of his quill.

Liquid squirted from every boil on the plant, thick, stinking, dark-green jets of it.

They hit the ceiling, the windows, and spattered Luna Lovegood’s magazine.

Ginny, who had flung her arms up in front of her face just in time, merely looked as though she was wearing a slimy green hat, but Harry, whose hands had been busy preventing the escape of Trevor, received a face full.

It smelled like rancid manure.

Neville, whose face and torso were also drenched, shook his head to get the worst out of his eyes.

“S-sorry,” he gasped.

“I haven’t tried that before. . . . Didn’t realize it would be quite so . . .”

“Don’t worry, though, Stinksap’s not poisonous,” he added nervously, as Harry spat a mouthful onto the floor.

At that precise moment, the door of their compartment slid open.

“Oh . . . hello, Harry,” said a nervous voice.

“Um . . . bad time?”

Harry wiped the lenses of his glasses with his Trevor-free hand.

A very pretty girl with long, shiny black hair was standing in the doorway smiling at him: Cho Chang, the Seeker on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.

“Oh . . . hi,” said Harry blankly.

“Um . . .” said Cho.

“Well . . . just thought I’d say hello . . . ’bye then.”

She closed the door again, rather pink in the face, and departed.

Harry slumped back in his seat and groaned.

He would have liked Cho to discover him sitting with a group of very cool people laughing their heads off at a joke he had just told.

He would not have chosen to be sitting with Neville and Loony Lovegood, clutching a toad and dripping in Stinksap.

“Never mind,” said Ginny bracingly.

“Look, we can get rid of all this easily.”

She pulled out her wand.

“Scourgify!”

The Stinksap vanished.

“Sorry,” said Neville again, in a small voice.

Ron and Hermione did not turn up for nearly an hour, by which time the food trolley had already gone by.

Harry, Ginny, and Neville had finished their Pumpkin Pasties and were busy swapping Chocolate Frog cards when the compartment door slid open and they walked in, accompanied by Crookshanks and a shrilly hooting Pigwidgeon in his cage.

“I’m starving,” said Ron, stowing Pigwidgeon next to Hedwig, grabbing a Chocolate Frog from Harry and throwing himself into the seat next to him.

He ripped open the wrapper, bit off the Frog’s head, and leaned back with his eyes closed as though he had had a very exhausting morning.

“Well, there are two fifth-year prefects from each House,” said Hermione, looking thoroughly disgruntled as she took her seat.

“Boy and girl from each.”

“And guess who’s a Slytherin prefect?” said Ron, still with his eyes closed.

“Malfoy,” replied Harry at once, his worst fear confirmed.

“’Course,” said Ron bitterly, stuffing the rest of the Frog into his mouth and taking another.

“And that complete cow Pansy Parkinson,” said Hermione viciously.

“How she got to be a prefect when she’s thicker than a concussed troll . . .”

“Who’s Hufflepuff?” Harry asked.

“Ernie Macmillan and Hannah Abbott,” said Ron thickly.

“And Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil for Ravenclaw,” said Hermione.

“You went to the Yule Ball with Padma Patil,” said a vague voice.

Everyone turned to look at Luna Lovegood, who was gazing unblinkingly at Ron over the top of The Quibbler.

He swallowed his mouthful of Frog.

“Yeah, I know I did,” he said, looking mildly surprised.

“She didn’t enjoy it very much,” Luna informed him.

“She doesn’t think you treated her very well, because you wouldn’t dance with her.”

“I don’t think I’d have minded,” she added thoughtfully, “I don’t like dancing very much.”

She retreated behind The Quibbler again.

Ron stared at the cover with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds, then looked around at Ginny for some kind of explanation, but Ginny had stuffed her knuckles in her mouth to stop herself giggling.

Ron shook his head, bemused, then checked his watch.

“We’re supposed to patrol the corridors every so often,” he told Harry and Neville, “and we can give out punishments if people are misbehaving."

"I can’t wait to get Crabbe and Goyle for something . . .”

“You’re not supposed to abuse your position, Ron!” said Hermione sharply.

“Yeah, right, because Malfoy won’t abuse it at all,” said Ron sarcastically.

“So you’re going to descend to his level?”

“No, I’m just going to make sure I get his mates before he gets mine.”

“For heaven’s sake, Ron —”

“I’ll make Goyle do lines, it’ll kill him, he hates writing,” said Ron happily.

He lowered his voice to Goyle’s low grunt and, screwing up his face in a look of pained concentration, mimed writing in midair.

“I . . . must . . . not . . . look . . . like . . . a . . . baboon’s . . . backside . . .”

Everyone laughed, but nobody laughed harder than Luna Lovegood.

She let out a scream of mirth that caused Hedwig to wake up and flap her wings indignantly and Crookshanks to leap up into the luggage rack, hissing.

She laughed so hard that her magazine slipped out of her grasp, slid down her legs, and onto the floor.

“That was funny!”

Her prominent eyes swam with tears as she gasped for breath, staring at Ron.

Utterly nonplussed, he looked around at the others, who were now laughing at the expression on Ron’s face and at the ludicrously prolonged laughter of Luna Lovegood, who was rocking backward and forward, clutching her sides.

“Are you taking the mickey?” said Ron, frowning at her.

“Baboon’s . . . backside!” she choked, holding her ribs.

Everyone else was watching Luna laughing, but Harry, glancing at the magazine on the floor, noticed something that made him dive for it.

Upside down it had been hard to tell what the picture on the front was, but Harry now realized it was a fairly bad cartoon of Cornelius Fudge.

Harry only recognized him because of the lime-green bowler hat.

One of Fudge’s hands was clenched around a bag of gold; the other hand was throttling a goblin.

The cartoon was captioned: HOW FAR WILL FUDGE GO TO GAIN GRINGOTTS?

Beneath this were listed the titles of other articles inside the magazine.

CORRUPTION IN THE QUIDDITCH LEAGUE: How the Tornados Are Taking Control

SECRETS OF THE ANCIENT RUNES REVEALED

SIRIUS BLACK: Villain or Victim?

“Can I have a look at this?” Harry asked Luna eagerly.

She nodded, still gazing at Ron, breathless with laughter.

Harry opened the magazine and scanned the index; until this moment he had completely forgotten the magazine Kingsley had handed Mr. Weasley to give to Sirius, but it must have been this edition of The Quibbler.

He found the page and turned excitedly to the article.

This too was illustrated by a rather bad cartoon; in fact, Harry would not have known it was supposed to be Sirius if it hadn’t been captioned.

Sirius was standing on a pile of human bones with his wand out.

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The headline on the article read: SIRIUS — Black As He’s Painted? Notorious Mass Murderer OR Innocent Singing Sensation?

Harry had to read this sentence several times before he was convinced that he had not misunderstood it.

Since when had Sirius been a singing sensation?

For fourteen years Sirius Black has been believed guilty of the mass murder of twelve innocent Muggles and one wizard.

Black’s audacious escape from Azkaban two years ago has led to the widest manhunt ever conducted by the Ministry of Magic.

None of us has ever questioned that he deserves to be recaptured and handed back to the dementors.

BUT DOES HE?

Startling new evidence has recently come to light that Sirius Black may not have committed the crimes for which he was sent to Azkaban.

In fact, says Doris Purkiss, of 18 Acanthia Way, Little Norton, Black may not even have been present at the killings.

“What people don’t realize is that Sirius Black is a false name,” says Mrs. Purkiss.

“The man people believe to be Sirius Black is actually Stubby Boardman, lead singer of the popular singing group The Hobgoblins, who retired from public life after being struck in the ear by a turnip at a concert in Little Norton Church Hall nearly fifteen years ago."

"I recognized him the moment I saw his picture in the paper."

"Now, Stubby couldn’t possibly have committed those crimes, because on the day in question he happened to be enjoying a romantic candlelit dinner with me."

"I have written to the Minister of Magic and am expecting him to give Stubby, alias Sirius, a full pardon any day now.”

Harry finished reading and stared at the page in disbelief.

Perhaps it was a joke, he thought, perhaps the magazine often printed spoof items.

He flicked back a few pages and found the piece on Fudge.

Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, denied that he had any plans to take over the running of the Wizarding bank, Gringotts, when he was elected Minister of Magic five years ago.

Fudge has always insisted that he wants nothing more than to “cooperate peacefully” with the guardians of our gold.

BUT DOES HE?

Sources close to the Minister have recently disclosed that Fudge’s dearest ambition is to seize control of the goblin gold supplies and that he will not hesitate to use force if need be.

“It wouldn’t be the first time, either,” said a Ministry insider.

“Cornelius ‘Goblin-Crusher’ Fudge, that’s what his friends call him, if you could hear him when he thinks no one’s listening, oh, he’s always talking about the goblins he’s had done in; he’s had them drowned, he’s had them dropped off buildings, he’s had them poisoned, he’s had them cooked in pies . . .”

Harry did not read any further.

Fudge might have many faults but Harry found it extremely hard to imagine him ordering goblins to be cooked in pies.

He flicked through the rest of the magazine.

Pausing every few pages he read an accusation that the Tutshill Tornados were winning the Quidditch League by a combination of blackmail, illegal broom-tampering, and torture.

An interview with a wizard who claimed to have flown to the moon on a Cleansweep Six and brought back a bag of moon frogs to prove it.

And an article on ancient runes, which at least explained why Luna had been reading The Quibbler upside down.

According to the magazine, if you turned the runes on their heads they revealed a spell to make your enemy’s ears turn into kumquats.

In fact, compared to the rest of the articles in The Quibbler, the suggestion that Sirius might really be the lead singer of The Hobgoblins was quite sensible.

“Anything good in there?” asked Ron as Harry closed the magazine.

“Of course not,” said Hermione scathingly, before Harry could answer, “The Quibbler’s rubbish, everyone knows that.”

“Excuse me,” said Luna; her voice had suddenly lost its dreamy quality.

“My father’s the editor.”

“I — oh,” said Hermione, looking embarrassed.

“Well . . . it’s got some interesting . . . I mean, it’s quite . . .”

“I’ll have it back, thank you,” said Luna coldly, and leaning forward she snatched it out of Harry’s hands.

Rifling through it to page fifty-seven, she turned it resolutely upside down again and disappeared behind it, just as the compartment door opened for the third time.

Harry looked around; he had expected this, but that did not make the sight of Draco Malfoy smirking at him from between his cronies Crabbe and Goyle any more enjoyable.

“What?” he said aggressively, before Malfoy could open his mouth.

“Manners, Potter, or I’ll have to give you a detention,” drawled Malfoy, whose sleek blond hair and pointed chin were just like his father’s.

“You see, I, unlike you, have been made a prefect, which means that I, unlike you, have the power to hand out punishments.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, “but you, unlike me, are a git, so get out and leave us alone.”

Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville laughed.

Malfoy’s lip curled.

“Tell me, how does it feel being second-best to Weasley, Potter?” he asked.

“Shut up, Malfoy,” said Hermione sharply.

“I seem to have touched a nerve,” said Malfoy, smirking.

“Well, just watch yourself, Potter, because I’ll be dogging your footsteps in case you step out of line.”

“Get out!” said Hermione, standing up.

Sniggering, Malfoy gave Harry a last malicious look and departed, Crabbe and Goyle lumbering in his wake.

Hermione slammed the compartment door behind them and turned to look at Harry, who knew at once that she, like him, had registered what Malfoy had said and been just as unnerved by it.

“Chuck us another Frog,” said Ron, who had clearly noticed nothing.

Harry could not talk freely in front of Neville and Luna.

He exchanged another nervous look with Hermione and then stared out of the window.

He had thought Sirius coming with him to the station was a bit of a laugh, but suddenly it seemed reckless, if not downright dangerous. . . .

Hermione had been right. . . .

Sirius should not have come.

What if Mr. Malfoy had noticed the black dog and told Draco, what if he had deduced that the Weasleys, Lupin, Tonks, and Moody knew where Sirius was hiding?

Or had Malfoy’s use of the word “dogging” been a coincidence?

The weather remained undecided as they traveled farther and farther north.

Rain spattered the windows in a halfhearted way, then the sun put in a feeble appearance before clouds drifted over it once more.

When darkness fell and lamps came on inside the carriages, Luna rolled up The Quibbler, put it carefully away in her bag, and took to staring at everyone in the compartment instead.

Harry was sitting with his forehead pressed against the train window, trying to get a first distant glimpse of Hogwarts, but it was a moonless night and the rain-streaked window was grimy.

“We’d better change,” said Hermione at last.

She and Ron pinned their prefect badges carefully to their chests.

Harry saw Ron checking how it looked in the black window.

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At last, the train began to slow down and they heard the usual racket up and down it as everybody scrambled to get their luggage and pets assembled, ready for departure.

Ron and Hermione were supposed to supervise all this; they disappeared from the carriage again, leaving Harry and the others to look after Crookshanks and Pigwidgeon.

“I’ll carry that owl, if you like,” said Luna to Harry, reaching out for Pigwidgeon as Neville stowed Trevor carefully in an inside pocket.

“Oh — er — thanks,” said Harry, handing her the cage and hoisting Hedwig’s more securely into his arms.

They shuffled out of the compartment feeling the first sting of the night air on their faces as they joined the crowd in the corridor.

Slowly, they moved toward the doors.

Harry could smell the pine trees that lined the path down to the lake.

He stepped down onto the platform and looked around, listening for the familiar call of “Firs’ years over here . . . firs’ years . . .”

But it did not come.

Instead, a quite different voice, a brisk female one, was calling, “First years line up over here, please! All first years to me!”

A lantern came swinging toward Harry and by its light he saw the prominent chin and severe haircut of Professor Grubbly-Plank, the witch who had taken over Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures lessons for a while the previous year.

“Where’s Hagrid?” he said out loud.

“I don’t know,” said Ginny, “but we’d better get out of the way, we’re blocking the door.”

“Oh yeah . . .”

Harry and Ginny became separated as they moved off along the platform and out through the station.

Jostled by the crowd, Harry squinted through the darkness for a glimpse of Hagrid; he had to be here, Harry had been relying on it — seeing Hagrid again had been one of the things to which he had been looking forward most.

But there was no sign of him at all.

He can’t have left, Harry told himself as he shuffled slowly through a narrow doorway onto the road outside with the rest of the crowd.

He’s just got a cold or something. . . .

He looked around for Ron or Hermione, wanting to know what they thought about the reappearance of Professor Grubbly-Plank, but neither of them was anywhere near him, so he allowed himself to be shunted forward onto the dark rain-washed road outside Hogsmeade station.

Here stood the hundred or so horseless stagecoaches that always took the students above first year up to the castle.

Harry glanced quickly at them, turned away to keep a lookout for Ron and Hermione, then did a double take.

The coaches were no longer horseless.

There were creatures standing between the carriage shafts; if he had had to give them a name, he supposed he would have called them horses, though there was something reptilian about them, too.

They were completely fleshless, their black coats clinging to their skeletons, of which every bone was visible.

Their heads were dragonish, and their pupil-less eyes white and staring.

Wings sprouted from each wither — vast, black leathery wings that looked as though they ought to belong to giant bats.

Standing still and quiet in the gloom, the creatures looked eerie and sinister.

Harry could not understand why the coaches were being pulled by these horrible horses when they were quite capable of moving along by themselves.

“Where’s Pig?” said Ron’s voice, right behind Harry.

“That Luna girl was carrying him,” said Harry, turning quickly, eager to consult Ron about Hagrid.

“Where d’you reckon —”

“— Hagrid is? I dunno,” said Ron, sounding worried. “He’d better be okay . . .”

A short distance away, Draco Malfoy, followed by a small gang of cronies including Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson, was pushing some timid-looking second years out of the way so that they could get a coach to themselves.

Seconds later Hermione emerged panting from the crowd.

“Malfoy was being absolutely foul to a first year back there, I swear I’m going to report him, he’s only had his badge three minutes and he’s using it to bully people worse than ever. . . . Where’s Crookshanks?”

“Ginny’s got him,” said Harry.

“There she is . . .”

Ginny had just emerged from the crowd, clutching a squirming Crookshanks.

“Thanks,” said Hermione, relieving Ginny of the cat.

“Come on, let’s get a carriage together before they all fill up . . .”

“I haven’t got Pig yet!” Ron said, but Hermione was already heading off toward the nearest unoccupied coach.

Harry remained behind with Ron.

“What are those things, d’you reckon?” he asked Ron, nodding at the horrible horses as the other students surged past them.

“What things?”

“Those horse —”

Luna appeared holding Pigwidgeon’s cage in her arms; the tiny owl was twittering excitedly as usual.

“Here you are,” she said. “He’s a sweet little owl, isn’t he?”

“Er . . . yeah . . . He’s all right,” said Ron gruffly.

“Well, come on then, let’s get in. . . . what were you saying, Harry?”

“I was saying, what are those horse things?” Harry said, as he, Ron, and Luna made for the carriage in which Hermione and Ginny were already sitting.

“What horse things?”

“The horse things pulling the carriages!” said Harry impatiently; they were, after all, about three feet from the nearest one; it was watching them with empty white eyes.

Ron, however, gave Harry a perplexed look.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about — look!”

Harry grabbed Ron’s arm and wheeled him about so that he was face-to-face with the winged horse.

Ron stared straight at it for a second, then looked back at Harry.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“At the — there, between the shafts! Harnessed to the coach! It’s right there in front —”

But as Ron continued to look bemused, a strange thought occurred to Harry.

“Can’t . . . can’t you see them?”

“See what?”

“Can’t you see what’s pulling the carriages?”

Ron looked seriously alarmed now.

“Are you feeling all right, Harry?”

“I . . . yeah . . .”

Harry felt utterly bewildered.

The horse was there in front of him, gleaming solidly in the dim light issuing from the station windows behind them, vapor rising from its nostrils in the chilly night air.

Yet unless Ron was faking — and it was a very feeble joke if he was — Ron could not see it at all.

“Shall we get in, then?” said Ron uncertainly, looking at Harry as though worried about him.

“Yeah,” said Harry. “Yeah, go on . . .”

“It’s all right,” said a dreamy voice from beside Harry as Ron vanished into the coach’s dark interior.

“You’re not going mad or anything. I can see them too.”

“Can you?” said Harry desperately, turning to Luna.

He could see the bat-winged horses reflected in her wide, silvery eyes.

“Oh yes,” said Luna, “I’ve been able to see them ever since my first day here.

They’ve always pulled the carriages.

Don’t worry.

You’re just as sane as I am.”

Smiling faintly, she climbed into the musty interior of the carriage after Ron.

Not altogether reassured, Harry followed her.