[Part 7] "Harry Potter and Order of Phoenix" by Rowling J.K.

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CHAPTER XIII. DETENTION WITH DOLORES

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Dinner in the Great Hall that night was not a pleasant experience for Harry.

The news about his shouting match with Umbridge seemed to have traveled exceptionally fast even by Hogwarts standards.

He heard whispers all around him as he sat eating between Ron and Hermione.

The funny thing was that none of the whisperers seemed to mind him overhearing what they were saying about him.

On the contrary, it was as though they were hoping he would get angry and start shouting again, so that they could hear his story firsthand.

“He says he saw Cedric Diggory murdered . . .”

“He reckons he dueled with You-Know-Who . . .”

“Come off it . . .”

“Who does he think he’s kidding?”

“Pur-lease . . .”

“What I don’t get,” said Harry in a shaking voice, laying down his knife and fork (his hands were trembling too much to hold them steady), “is why they all believed the story two months ago when Dumbledore told them . . .”

“The thing is, Harry, I’m not sure they did,” said Hermione grimly.

“Oh, let’s get out of here.”

She slammed down her own knife and fork.

Ron looked sadly at his half-finished apple pie but followed suit.

People stared at them all the way out of the Hall.

“What d’you mean, you’re not sure they believed Dumbledore?” Harry asked Hermione when they reached the first-floor landing.

“Look, you don’t understand what it was like after it happened,” said Hermione quietly.

“You arrived back in the middle of the lawn clutching Cedric’s dead body. . . . None of us saw what happened in the maze. . . . We just had Dumbledore’s word for it that You-Know-Who had come back and killed Cedric and fought you.”

“Which is the truth!” said Harry loudly.

“I know it is, Harry, so will you please stop biting my head off?” said Hermione wearily.

“It’s just that before the truth could sink in, everyone went home for the summer, where they spent two months reading about how you’re a nutcase and Dumbledore’s going senile!”

Rain pounded on the windowpanes as they strode along the empty corridors back to Gryffindor Tower.

Harry felt as though his first day had lasted a week, but he still had a mountain of homework to do before bed.

A dull pounding pain was developing over his right eye.

He glanced out of a rain-washed window at the dark grounds as they turned into the Fat Lady’s corridor.

There was still no light in Hagrid’s cabin.

“Mimbulus mimbletonia,” said Hermione, before the Fat Lady could ask.

The portrait swung open to reveal the hole behind and the three of them scrambled back through it.

The common room was almost empty; nearly everyone was still down at dinner.

Crookshanks uncoiled himself from an armchair and trotted to meet them, purring loudly.

When Harry, Ron, and Hermione took their three favorite chairs at the fireside, Crookshanks leapt lightly into Hermione’s lap and curled up there like a furry ginger cushion.

Harry gazed into the flames, feeling drained and exhausted.

“How can Dumbledore have let this happen?” Hermione cried suddenly, making Harry and Ron jump.

Crookshanks leapt off her, looking affronted.

She pounded the arms of her chair in fury, so that bits of stuffing leaked out of the holes.

“How can he let that terrible woman teach us? And in our O.W.L. year too!”

“Well, we’ve never had great Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers, have we?” said Harry.

“You know what it’s like, Hagrid told us, nobody wants the job, they say it’s jinxed.”

“Yes, but to employ someone who’s actually refusing to let us do magic! What’s Dumbledore playing at?”

“And she’s trying to get people to spy for her,” said Ron darkly.

“Remember when she said she wanted us to come and tell her if we hear anyone saying You-Know-Who’s back?”

“Of course she’s here to spy on us all, that’s obvious, why else would Fudge have wanted her to come?” snapped Hermione.

“Don’t start arguing again,” said Harry wearily, as Ron opened his mouth to retaliate.

“Can’t we just . . . Let’s just do that homework, get it out of the way . . .”

They collected their schoolbags from a corner and returned to the chairs by the fire.

People were coming back from dinner now.

Harry kept his face averted from the portrait hole, but could still sense the stares he was attracting.

“Shall we do Snape’s stuff first?” said Ron, dipping his quill into his ink.

“‘The properties . . . of moonstone . . . and its uses . . . in potion-making . . .’” he muttered, writing the words across the top of his parchment as he spoke them.

“There.” He underlined the title, then looked up expectantly at Hermione.

“So what are the properties of moonstone and its uses in potion-making?”

But Hermione was not listening.

She was squinting over into the far corner of the room, where Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were now sitting at the center of a knot of innocent-looking first years, all of whom were chewing something that seemed to have come out of a large paper bag that Fred was holding.

“No, I’m sorry, they’ve gone too far,” she said, standing up and looking positively furious.

“Come on, Ron.”

“I — what?” said Ron, plainly playing for time.

“No — come on, Hermione — we can’t tell them off for giving out sweets . . .”

“You know perfectly well that those are bits of Nosebleed Nougat or — or Puking Pastilles or —”

“Fainting Fancies?” Harry suggested quietly.

One by one, as though hit over the heads with invisible mallets, the first years were slumping unconscious in their seats.

Some slid right onto the floor, others merely hung over the arms of their chairs, their tongues lolling out.

Most of the people watching were laughing.

Hermione, however, squared her shoulders and marched directly over to where Fred and George now stood with clipboards, closely observing the unconscious first years.

Ron rose halfway out of his chair, hovered uncertainly for a moment or two, then muttered to Harry, “She’s got it under control,” before sinking as low in his chair as his lanky frame permitted.

“That’s enough!” Hermione said forcefully to Fred and George, both of whom looked up in mild surprise.

“Yeah, you’re right,” said George, nodding.

“This dosage looks strong enough, doesn’t it?”

“I told you this morning, you can’t test your rubbish on students!”

“We’re paying them!” said Fred indignantly.

“I don’t care, it could be dangerous!”

“Rubbish,” said Fred.

“Calm down, Hermione, they’re fine!” said Lee reassuringly as he walked from first year to first year, inserting purple sweets into their open mouths.

“Yeah, look, they’re coming round now,” said George.

A few of the first years were indeed stirring.

Several looked so shocked to find themselves lying on the floor, or dangling off their chairs, that Harry was sure Fred and George had not warned them what the sweets were going to do.

“Feel all right?” said George kindly to a small dark-haired girl lying at his feet.

“I-I think so,” she said shakily.

“Excellent,” said Fred happily.

But the next second Hermione had snatched both his clipboard and the paper bag of Fainting Fancies from his hands.

“It is NOT excellent!”

“’Course it is, they’re alive, aren’t they?” said Fred angrily.

“You can’t do this, what if you made one of them really ill?”

“We’re not going to make them ill, we’ve already tested them all on ourselves, this is just to see if everyone reacts the same —”

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“If you don’t stop doing it, I’m going to —”

“Put us in detention?” said Fred in an I’d-like-to-see-you-try-it voice.

“Make us write lines?” said George, smirking.

Onlookers all over the room were laughing.

Hermione drew herself up to her full height.

Her eyes were narrowed and her bushy hair seemed to crackle with electricity.

“No,” she said, her voice quivering with anger, “but I will write to your mother.”

“You wouldn’t,” said George, horrified, taking a step back from her.

“Oh, yes, I would,” said Hermione grimly.

“I can’t stop you eating the stupid things yourselves, but you’re not giving them to first years.”

Fred and George looked thunderstruck.

It was clear that as far as they were concerned, Hermione’s threat was way below the belt.

With a last threatening look at them, she thrust Fred’s clipboard and the bag of Fancies back into his arms and stalked back to her chair by the fire.

Ron was now so low in his seat that his nose was roughly level with his knees.

“Thank you for your support, Ron,” Hermione said acidly.

“You handled it fine by yourself,” Ron mumbled.

Hermione stared down at her blank piece of parchment for a few seconds, then said edgily, “Oh, it’s no good, I can’t concentrate now. I’m going to bed.”

She wrenched her bag open; Harry thought she was about to put her books away, but instead she pulled out two misshapen woolly objects, placed them carefully on a table by the fireplace, covered them with a few screwed-up bits of parchment and a broken quill, and stood back to admire the effect.

“What in the name of Merlin are you doing?” said Ron, watching her as though fearful for her sanity.

“They’re hats for house-elves,” she said briskly, now stuffing her books back into her bag. “I did them over the summer. I’m a really slow knitter without magic, but now I’m back at school I should be able to make lots more.”

“You’re leaving out hats for the house-elves?” said Ron slowly. “And you’re covering them up with rubbish first?”

“Yes,” said Hermione defiantly, swinging her bag onto her back.

“That’s not on,” said Ron angrily. “You’re trying to trick them into picking up the hats. You’re setting them free when they might not want to be free.”

“Of course they want to be free!” said Hermione at once, though her face was turning pink. “Don’t you dare touch those hats, Ron!”

She left. Ron waited until she had disappeared through the door to the girls’ dormitories, then cleared the rubbish off the woolly hats.

“They should at least see what they’re picking up,” he said firmly. “Anyway . . .”

He rolled up the parchment on which he had written the title of Snape’s essay. “There’s no point trying to finish this now, I can’t do it without Hermione, I haven’t got a clue what you’re supposed to do with moonstones, have you?”

Harry shook his head, noticing as he did so that the ache in his right temple was getting worse. He thought of the long essay on giant wars and the pain stabbed at him sharply.

Knowing perfectly well that he would regret not finishing his homework tonight when the morning came, he piled his books back into his bag.

“I’m going to bed too.”

He passed Seamus on the way to the door leading to the dormitories, but did not look at him.

Harry had a fleeting impression that Seamus had opened his mouth to speak, but sped up, and reached the soothing peace of the stone spiral staircase without having to endure any more provocation.

The following day dawned just as leaden and rainy as the previous one.

Hagrid was still absent from the staff table at breakfast.

“But on the plus side, no Snape today,” said Ron bracingly.

Hermione yawned widely and poured herself some coffee.

She looked mildly pleased about something, and when Ron asked her what she had to be so happy about, she simply said, “The hats have gone. Seems the house-elves do want freedom after all.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Ron told her cuttingly. “They might not count as clothes. They didn’t look anything like hats to me, more like woolly bladders.”

Hermione did not speak to him all morning.

Double Charms was succeeded by double Transfiguration.

Professor Flitwick and Professor McGonagall both spent the first fifteen minutes of their lessons lecturing the class on the importance of O.W.L.s.

“What you must remember,” said little Professor Flitwick squeakily, perched as ever on a pile of books so that he could see over the top of his desk, “is that these examinations may influence your futures for many years to come! If you have not already given serious thought to your careers, now is the time to do so. And in the meantime, I’m afraid, we shall be working harder than ever to ensure that you all do yourselves justice!”

They then spent more than an hour reviewing Summoning Charms, which according to Professor Flitwick were bound to come up in their O.W.L., and he rounded off the lesson by setting them their largest amount of Charms homework ever.

It was the same, if not worse, in Transfiguration.

“You cannot pass an O.W.L.,” said Professor McGonagall grimly, “without serious application, practice, and study. I see no reason why everybody in this class should not achieve an O.W.L. in Transfiguration as long as they put in the work.”

Neville made a sad little disbelieving noise.

“Yes, you too, Longbottom,” said Professor McGonagall. “There’s nothing wrong with your work except lack of confidence.”

“So . . . today we are starting Vanishing Spells. These are easier than Conjuring Spells, which you would not usually attempt until N.E.W.T. level, but they are still among the most difficult magic you will be tested on in your O.W.L.”

She was quite right; Harry found the Vanishing Spells horribly difficult.

By the end of a double period, neither he nor Ron had managed to vanish the snails on which they were practicing, though Ron said hopefully that he thought his looked a bit paler.

Hermione, on the other hand, successfully vanished her snail on the third attempt, earning her a ten-point bonus for Gryffindor from Professor McGonagall.

She was the only person not given homework; everybody else was told to practice the spell overnight, ready for a fresh attempt on their snails the following afternoon.

Now panicking slightly about the amount of homework they had to do, Harry and Ron spent their lunch hour in the library looking up the uses of moonstones in potion-making.

Still angry about Ron’s slur on her woolly hats, Hermione did not join them.

By the time they reached Care of Magical Creatures in the afternoon, Harry’s head was aching again.

The day had become cool and breezy, and, as they walked down the sloping lawn toward Hagrid’s cabin on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, they felt the occasional drop of rain on their faces.

Professor Grubbly-Plank stood waiting for the class some ten yards from Hagrid’s front door, a long trestle table in front of her laden with many twigs.

As Harry and Ron reached her, a loud shout of laughter sounded behind them.

Turning, they saw Draco Malfoy striding toward them, surrounded by his usual gang of Slytherin cronies.

He had clearly just said something highly amusing, because Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy Parkinson, and the rest continued to snigger heartily as they gathered around the trestle table.

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Judging by the fact that all of them kept looking over at Harry, he was able to guess the subject of the joke without too much difficulty.

“Everyone here?” barked Professor Grubbly-Plank, once all the Slytherins and Gryffindors had arrived. “Let’s crack on then — who can tell me what these things are called?”

She indicated the heap of twigs in front of her.

Hermione’s hand shot into the air.

Behind her back, Malfoy did a buck-toothed imitation of her jumping up and down in eagerness to answer a question.

Pansy Parkinson gave a shriek of laughter that turned almost at once into a scream, as the twigs on the table leapt into the air and revealed themselves to be what looked like tiny pixieish creatures made of wood, each with knobbly brown arms and legs, two twiglike fingers at the end of each hand, and a funny, flat, barklike face in which a pair of beetle-brown eyes glittered.

“Oooooh!” said Parvati and Lavender, thoroughly irritating Harry.

Anyone would have thought that Hagrid never showed them impressive creatures; admittedly the flobberworms had been a bit dull, but the salamanders and hippogriffs had been interesting enough, and the Blast-Ended Skrewts perhaps too much so.

“Kindly keep your voices down, girls!” said Professor Grubbly-Plank sharply, scattering a handful of what looked like brown rice among the stick-creatures, who immediately fell upon the food.

“So — anyone know the names of these creatures? Miss Granger?”

“Bowtruckles,” said Hermione. “They’re tree-guardians, usually live in wand-trees.”

“Five points for Gryffindor,” said Professor Grubbly-Plank. “Yes, these are bowtruckles and, as Miss Granger rightly says, they generally live in trees whose wood is of wand quality. Anybody know what they eat?”

“Wood lice,” said Hermione promptly, which explained why what Harry had taken for grains of brown rice were moving. “But fairy eggs if they can get them.”

“Good girl, take another five points.”

“So whenever you need leaves or wood from a tree in which a bowtruckle lodges, it is wise to have a gift of wood lice ready to distract or placate it. They may not look dangerous, but if angered they will gouge out human eyes with their fingers, which, as you can see, are very sharp and not at all desirable near the eyeballs.”

“So if you’d like to gather closer, take a few wood lice and a bowtruckle — I have enough here for one between three — you can study them more closely. I want a sketch from each of you with all body parts labeled by the end of the lesson.”

The class surged forward around the trestle table.

Harry deliberately circled around the back so that he ended up right next to Professor Grubbly-Plank.

“Where’s Hagrid?” he asked her, while everyone else was choosing bowtruckles.

“Never you mind,” said Professor Grubbly-Plank repressively, which had been her attitude last time Hagrid had failed to turn up for a class too.

Smirking all over his pointed face, Draco Malfoy leaned across Harry and seized the largest bowtruckle.

“Maybe,” said Malfoy in an undertone, so that only Harry could hear him, “the stupid great oaf’s got himself badly injured.”

“Maybe you will if you don’t shut up,” said Harry out of the side of his mouth.

“Maybe he’s been messing with stuff that’s too big for him, if you get my drift.”

Malfoy walked away, smirking over his shoulder at Harry, who suddenly felt sick.

Did Malfoy know something?

His father was a Death Eater, after all; what if he had information about Hagrid’s fate that had not yet reached the Order’s ears?

He hurried back around the table to Ron and Hermione, who were squatting on the grass some distance away and attempting to persuade a bowtruckle to remain still long enough to draw it.

Harry pulled out parchment and quill, crouched down beside the others, and related in a whisper what Malfoy had just said.

“Dumbledore would know if something had happened to Hagrid,” said Hermione at once.

“It’s just playing into Malfoy’s hands to look worried, it tells him we don’t know exactly what’s going on.

We’ve got to ignore him, Harry.

Here, hold the bowtruckle for a moment, just so I can draw its face . . .”

“Yes,” came Malfoy’s clear drawl from the group nearest them, “Father was talking to the Minister just a couple of days ago, you know, and it sounds as though the Ministry’s really determined to crack down on substandard teaching in this place.

So even if that overgrown moron does show up again, he’ll probably be sent packing straight away.”

“OUCH!”

Harry had gripped the bowtruckle so hard that it had almost snapped; it had just taken a great retaliatory swipe at his hand with its sharp fingers, leaving two long deep cuts there.

Harry dropped it; Crabbe and Goyle, who had already been guffawing at the idea of Hagrid being sacked, laughed still harder as the bowtruckle set off at full tilt toward the forest, a little, moving stickman soon swallowed up by the tree roots.

When the bell echoed distantly over the grounds Harry rolled up his bloodstained bowtruckle picture and marched off to Herbology with his hand wrapped in a handkerchief of Hermione’s and Malfoy’s derisive laughter still ringing in his ears.

“If he calls Hagrid a moron one more time . . .” snarled Harry.

“Harry, don’t go picking a row with Malfoy, don’t forget, he’s a prefect now, he could make life difficult for you . . .”

“Wow, I wonder what it’d be like to have a difficult life?” said Harry sarcastically.

Ron laughed, but Hermione frowned.

Together they traipsed across the vegetable patch.

The sky still appeared unable to make up its mind whether it wanted to rain or not.

“I just wish Hagrid would hurry up and get back, that’s all,” said Harry in a low voice, as they reached the greenhouses.

“And don’t say that Grubbly-Plank woman’s a better teacher!” he added threateningly.

“I wasn’t going to,” said Hermione calmly.

“Because she’ll never be as good as Hagrid,” said Harry firmly, fully aware that he had just experienced an exemplary Care of Magical Creatures lesson and was thoroughly annoyed about it.

The door of the nearest greenhouse opened and some fourth years spilled out of it, including Ginny.

“Hi,” she said brightly as she passed.

A few seconds later, Luna Lovegood emerged, trailing behind the rest of the class, a smudge of earth on her nose and her hair tied in a knot on the top of her head.

When she saw Harry, her prominent eyes seemed to bulge excitedly and she made a beeline straight for him.

Many of his classmates turned curiously to watch.

Luna took a great breath and then said, without so much as a preliminary hello: “I believe He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back, and I believe you fought him and escaped from him.”

“Er — right,” said Harry awkwardly.

Luna was wearing what looked like a pair of orange radishes for earrings, a fact that Parvati and Lavender seemed to have noticed, as they were both giggling and pointing at her earlobes.

“You can laugh!” Luna said, her voice rising, apparently under the impression that Parvati and Lavender were laughing at what she had said rather than what she was wearing.

“But people used to believe there were no such things as the Blibbering Humdinger or the Crumple-Horned Snorkack!”

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“Well, they were right, weren’t they?” said Hermione impatiently.

“There weren’t any such things as the Blibbering Humdinger or the Crumple-Horned Snorkack.”

Luna gave her a withering look and flounced away, radishes swinging madly.

Parvati and Lavender were not the only ones hooting with laughter now.

“D’you mind not offending the only people who believe me?” Harry asked Hermione as they made their way into class.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Harry, you can do better than her,” said Hermione.

“Ginny’s told me all about her, apparently she’ll only believe in things as long as there’s no proof at all.

Well, I wouldn’t expect anything else from someone whose father runs The Quibbler.”

Harry thought of the sinister winged horses he had seen on the night he had arrived and how Luna had said she could see them too.

His spirits sank slightly.

Had she been lying?

But before he could devote much more thought to the matter, Ernie Macmillan had stepped up to him.

“I want you to know, Potter,” he said in a loud, carrying voice, “that it’s not only weirdos who support you.

I personally believe you one hundred percent.

My family have always stood firm behind Dumbledore, and so do I.”

“Er — thanks very much, Ernie,” said Harry, taken aback but pleased.

Ernie might be pompous on occasions like these, but Harry was in a mood to deeply appreciate a vote of confidence from somebody who was not wearing radishes in their ears.

Ernie’s words had certainly wiped the smile from Lavender Brown’s face and, as he turned to talk to Ron and Hermione, Harry caught Seamus’s expression, which looked both confused and defiant.

To nobody’s surprise, Professor Sprout started their lesson by lecturing them about the importance of O.W.L.s.

Harry wished all the teachers would stop doing this; he was starting to get an anxious, twisted feeling in his stomach every time he remembered how much homework he had to do, a feeling that worsened dramatically when Professor Sprout gave them yet another essay at the end of class.

Tired and smelling strongly of dragon dung, Professor Sprout’s preferred brand of fertilizer, the Gryffindors trooped back up to the castle, none of them talking very much; it had been another long day.

As Harry was starving, and he had his first detention with Umbridge at five o’clock, he headed straight for dinner without dropping off his bag in Gryffindor Tower so that he could bolt something down before facing whatever she had in store for him.

He had barely reached the entrance of the Great Hall, however, when a loud and angry voice said, “Oy, Potter!”

“What now?” he muttered wearily, turning to face Angelina Johnson, who looked as though she was in a towering temper.

“I’ll tell you what now,” she said, marching straight up to him and poking him hard in the chest with her finger.

“How come you’ve landed yourself in detention for five o’clock on Friday?”

“What?” said Harry.

“Why . . . oh yeah, Keeper tryouts!”

“Now he remembers!” snarled Angelina.

“Didn’t I tell you I wanted to do a tryout with the whole team, and find someone who fitted in with everyone?

Didn’t I tell you I’d booked the Quidditch pitch specially?

And now you’ve decided you’re not going to be there!”

“I didn’t decide not to be there!” said Harry, stung by the injustice of these words.

“I got detention from that Umbridge woman, just because I told her the truth about You-Know-Who —”

“Well, you can just go straight to her and ask her to let you off on Friday,” said Angelina fiercely, “and I don’t care how you do it, tell her You-Know-Who’s a figment of your imagination if you like, just make sure you’re there!”

She stormed away.

“You know what?” Harry said to Ron and Hermione as they entered the Great Hall.

“I think we’d better check with Puddlemere United whether Oliver Wood’s been killed during a training session, because she seems to be channeling his spirit.”

“What d’you reckon are the odds of Umbridge letting you off on Friday?” said Ron skeptically, as they sat down at the Gryffindor table.

“Less than zero,” said Harry glumly, tipping lamb chops onto his plate and starting to eat.

“Better try, though, hadn’t I?

I’ll offer to do two more detentions or something, I dunno . . .”

He swallowed a mouthful of potato and added, “I hope she doesn’t keep me too long this evening.

You realize we’ve got to write three essays, practice Vanishing Spells for McGonagall, work out a countercharm for Flitwick, finish the bowtruckle drawing, and start that stupid dream diary for Trelawney?”

Ron moaned and for some reason glanced up at the ceiling.

“And it looks like it’s going to rain.”

“What’s that got to do with our homework?” said Hermione, her eyebrows raised.

“Nothing,” said Ron at once, his ears reddening.

At five to five Harry bade the other two good-bye and set off for Umbridge’s office on the third floor.

When he knocked on the door she said, “Come in,” in a sugary voice.

He entered cautiously, looking around.

He had known this office under three of its previous occupants.

In the days when Gilderoy Lockhart had lived here it had been plastered in beaming portraits of its owner.

When Lupin had occupied it, it was likely you would meet some fascinating Dark creature in a cage or tank if you came to call.

In the impostor Moody’s days it had been packed with various instruments and artifacts for the detection of wrongdoing and concealment.

Now, however, it looked totally unrecognizable.

The surfaces had all been draped in lacy covers and cloths.

There were several vases full of dried flowers, each residing on its own doily, and on one of the walls was a collection of ornamental plates, each decorated with a large Technicolored kitten wearing a different bow around its neck.

These were so foul that Harry stared at them, transfixed, until Professor Umbridge spoke again.

“Good evening, Mr. Potter.”

Harry started and looked around.

He had not noticed her at first because she was wearing a luridly flowered set of robes that blended only too well with the tablecloth on the desk behind her.

“Evening,” Harry said stiffly.

“Well, sit down,” she said, pointing toward a small table draped in lace beside which she had drawn up a straight-backed chair.

A piece of blank parchment lay on the table, apparently waiting for him.

“Er,” said Harry, without moving.

“Professor Umbridge?

Er — before we start, I-I wanted to ask you a . . . a favor.”

Her bulging eyes narrowed.

“Oh yes?”

“Well I’m . . . I’m on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

And I was supposed to be at the tryouts for the new Keeper at five o’clock on Friday and I was — was wondering whether I could skip detention that night and do it — do it another night . . . instead . . .”

He knew long before he reached the end of his sentence that it was no good.

“Oh no,” said Umbridge, smiling so widely that she looked as though she had just swallowed a particularly juicy fly.

“Oh no, no, no. This is your punishment for spreading evil, nasty, attention-seeking stories, Mr. Potter, and punishments certainly cannot be adjusted to suit the guilty one’s convenience.

No, you will come here at five o’clock tomorrow, and the next day, and on Friday too, and you will do your detentions as planned.

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I think it rather a good thing that you are missing something you really want to do.

It ought to reinforce the lesson I am trying to teach you.”

Harry felt the blood surge to his head and heard a thumping noise in his ears.

So he told evil, nasty, attention-seeking stories, did he?

She was watching him with her head slightly to one side, still smiling widely, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking and was waiting to see whether he would start shouting again.

With a massive effort Harry looked away from her, dropped his schoolbag beside the straight-backed chair, and sat down.

“There,” said Umbridge sweetly, “we’re getting better at controlling our temper already, aren’t we?

Now, you are going to be doing some lines for me, Mr. Potter.

No, not with your quill,” she added, as Harry bent down to open his bag.

“You’re going to be using a rather special one of mine.

Here you are.”

She handed him a long, thin black quill with an unusually sharp point.

“I want you to write ‘I must not tell lies,’” she told him softly.

“How many times?” Harry asked, with a creditable imitation of politeness.

“Oh, as long as it takes for the message to sink in,” said Umbridge sweetly.

“Off you go.”

She moved over to her desk, sat down, and bent over a stack of parchment that looked like essays for marking.

Harry raised the sharp black quill and then realized what was missing.

“You haven’t given me any ink,” he said.

“Oh, you won’t need ink,” said Professor Umbridge with the merest suggestion of a laugh in her voice.

Harry placed the point of the quill on the paper and wrote: I must not tell lies.

He let out a gasp of pain.

The words had appeared on the parchment in what appeared to be shining red ink.

At the same time, the words had appeared on the back of Harry’s right hand, cut into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel — yet even as he stared at the shining cut, the skin healed over again, leaving the place where it had been slightly redder than before but quite smooth.

Harry looked around at Umbridge.

She was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth stretched in a smile.

“Yes?”

“Nothing,” said Harry quietly.

He looked back at the parchment, placed the quill upon it once more, wrote I must not tell lies, and felt the searing pain on the back of his hand for a second time; once again the words had been cut into his skin, once again they healed over seconds later.

And on it went.

Again and again Harry wrote the words on the parchment in what he soon came to realize was not ink, but his own blood.

And again and again the words were cut into the back of his hand, healed, and then reappeared the next time he set quill to parchment.

Darkness fell outside Umbridge’s window.

Harry did not ask when he would be allowed to stop.

He did not even check his watch.

He knew she was watching him for signs of weakness and he was not going to show any, not even if he had to sit here all night, cutting open his own hand with this quill...

“Come here,” she said, after what seemed hours.

He stood up.

His hand was stinging painfully.

When he looked down at it he saw that the cut had healed, but that the skin there was red raw.

“Hand,” she said.

He extended it.

She took it in her own.

Harry repressed a shudder as she touched him with her thick, stubby fingers on which she wore a number of ugly old rings.

“Tut, tut, I don’t seem to have made much of an impression yet,” she said, smiling.

“Well, we’ll just have to try again tomorrow evening, won’t we?

You may go.”

Harry left her office without a word.

The school was quite deserted; it was surely past midnight.

He walked slowly up the corridor then, when he had turned the corner and was sure that she would not hear him, broke into a run.

He had not had time to practice Vanishing Spells, had not written a single dream in his dream diary, and had not finished the drawing of the bowtruckle, nor had he written his essays.

He skipped breakfast next morning to scribble down a couple of made-up dreams for Divination, their first lesson, and was surprised to find a disheveled Ron keeping him company.

“How come you didn’t do it last night?” Harry asked, as Ron stared wildly around the common room for inspiration.

Ron, who had been fast asleep when Harry got back to the dormitory, muttered something about “doing other stuff,” bent low over his parchment, and scrawled a few words.

“That’ll have to do,” he said, slamming the diary shut, “I’ve said I dreamed I was buying a new pair of shoes, she can’t make anything weird out of that, can she?”

They hurried off to North Tower together.

“How was detention with Umbridge, anyway? What did she make you do?”

Harry hesitated for a fraction of a second, then said, “Lines.”

“That’s not too bad, then, eh?” said Ron.

“Nope,” said Harry.

“Hey — I forgot — did she let you off for Friday?”

“No,” said Harry.

Ron groaned sympathetically.

It was another bad day for Harry; he was one of the worst in Transfiguration, not having practiced Vanishing Spells at all.

He had to give up his lunch hour to complete the picture of the bowtruckle, and meanwhile, Professors McGonagall, Grubbly-Plank, and Sinistra gave them yet more homework, which he had no prospect of finishing that evening because of his second detention with Umbridge.

To cap it all, Angelina Johnson tracked him down at dinner again and, on learning that he would not be able to attend Friday’s Keeper tryouts, told him she was not at all impressed by his attitude and that she expected players who wished to remain on the team to put training before their other commitments.

“I’m in detention!” Harry yelled after her as she stalked away.

“D’you think I’d rather be stuck in a room with that old toad or playing Quidditch?”

“At least it’s only lines,” said Hermione consolingly, as Harry sank back onto his bench and looked down at his steak-and-kidney pie, which he no longer fancied very much.

“It’s not as if it’s a dreadful punishment, really...”

Harry opened his mouth, closed it again, and nodded.

He was not really sure why he was not telling Ron and Hermione exactly what was happening in Umbridge’s room: He only knew that he did not want to see their looks of horror; that would make the whole thing seem worse and therefore more difficult to face.

He also felt dimly that this was between himself and Umbridge, a private battle of wills, and he was not going to give her the satisfaction of hearing that he had complained about it.

“I can’t believe how much homework we’ve got,” said Ron miserably.

“Well, why didn’t you do any last night?” Hermione asked him.

“Where were you anyway?”

“I was... I fancied a walk,” said Ron shiftily.

Harry had the distinct impression that he was not alone in concealing things at the moment.

The second detention was just as bad as the previous one.

The skin on the back of Harry’s hand became irritated more quickly now, red and inflamed; Harry thought it unlikely to keep healing as effectively for long.

Soon the cut would remain etched in his hand and Umbridge would, perhaps, be satisfied.

He let no moan of pain escape him, however, and from the moment of entering the room to the moment of his dismissal, again past midnight, he said nothing but “Good evening” and “Good night.”

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His homework situation, however, was now desperate, and when he returned to the Gryffindor common room he did not, though exhausted, go to bed, but opened his books and began Snape’s moonstone essay.

It was half-past two by the time he had finished it.

He knew he had done a poor job, but there was no help for it; unless he had something to give in he would be in detention with Snape next.

He then dashed off answers to the questions Professor McGonagall had set them, cobbled together something on the proper handling of bowtruckles for Professor Grubbly-Plank, and staggered up to bed, where he fell fully clothed on top of the bed covers and fell asleep immediately.

Thursday passed in a haze of tiredness.

Ron seemed very sleepy too, though Harry could not see why he should be.

Harry’s third detention passed in the same way as the previous two, except that after two hours the words “I must not tell lies” did not fade from the back of Harry’s hand, but remained scratched there, oozing droplets of blood.

The pause in the pointed quill’s scratching made Professor Umbridge look up.

“Ah,” she said softly, moving around her desk to examine his hand herself.

“Good. That ought to serve as a reminder to you, oughtn’t it?

You may leave for tonight.”

“Do I still have to come back tomorrow?” said Harry, picking up his schoolbag with his left hand rather than his smarting right.

“Oh yes,” said Professor Umbridge, smiling widely as before.

“Yes, I think we can etch the message a little deeper with another evening’s work.”

He had never before considered the possibility that there might be another teacher in the world he hated more than Snape, but as he walked back toward Gryffindor Tower he had to admit he had found a contender.

She’s evil, he thought, as he climbed a staircase to the seventh floor, she’s an evil, twisted, mad, old —

"Ron?"

He had reached the top of the stairs, turned right, and almost walked into Ron, who was lurking behind a statue of Lachlan the Lanky, clutching his broomstick.

He gave a great leap of surprise when he saw Harry and attempted to hide his new Cleansweep Eleven behind his back.

"What are you doing?"

"Er — nothing. What are you doing?"

Harry frowned at him.

"Come on, you can tell me! What are you hiding here for?"

"I'm — I'm hiding from Fred and George, if you must know," said Ron.

"They just went past with a bunch of first years, I bet they're testing stuff on them again, I mean, they can't do it in the common room now, can they, not with Hermione there."

He was talking in a very fast, feverish way.

"But what have you got your broom for, you haven't been flying, have you?" Harry asked.

"I — well — well, okay, I'll tell you, but don't laugh, all right?" Ron said defensively, turning redder with every second.

"I-I thought I'd try out for Gryffindor Keeper now I've got a decent broom. There. Go on. Laugh."

"I'm not laughing," said Harry.

Ron blinked.

"It's a brilliant idea! It'd be really cool if you got on the team! I've never seen you play Keeper, are you good?"

"I'm not bad," said Ron, who looked immensely relieved at Harry's reaction.

"Charlie, Fred, and George always made me Keep for them when they were training during the holidays."

"So you've been practicing tonight?"

"Every evening since Tuesday . . . just on my own, though, I've been trying to bewitch Quaffles to fly at me, but it hasn't been easy and I don't know how much use it'll be."

Ron looked nervous and anxious.

"Fred and George are going to laugh themselves stupid when I turn up for the tryouts. They haven't stopped taking the mickey out of me since I got made a prefect."

"I wish I was going to be there," said Harry bitterly, as they set off together toward the common room.

"Yeah, so do — Harry, what's that on the back of your hand?"

Harry, who had just scratched his nose with his free right hand, tried to hide it, but had as much success as Ron with his Cleansweep.

"It's just a cut — it's nothing — it's —"

But Ron had grabbed Harry's forearm and pulled the back of Harry's hand up level with his eyes.

There was a pause, during which he stared at the words carved into the skin, then he released Harry, looking sick.

"I thought you said she was giving you lines?"

Harry hesitated, but after all, Ron had been honest with him, so he told Ron the truth about the hours he had been spending in Umbridge's office.

"The old hag!" Ron said in a revolted whisper as they came to a halt in front of the Fat Lady, who was dozing peacefully with her head against her frame.

"She's sick! Go to McGonagall, say something!"

"No," said Harry at once.

"I'm not giving her the satisfaction of knowing she's got to me."

"Got to you? You can't let her get away with this!"

"I don't know how much power McGonagall's got over her," said Harry.

"Dumbledore, then, tell Dumbledore!"

"No," said Harry flatly.

"Why not?"

"He's got enough on his mind," said Harry, but that was not the true reason.

He was not going to go to Dumbledore for help when Dumbledore had not spoken to him once since last June.

"Well, I reckon you should —" Ron began, but he was interrupted by the Fat Lady, who had been watching them sleepily and now burst out.

"Are you going to give me the password or will I have to stay awake all night waiting for you to finish your conversation?"

Friday dawned sullen and sodden as the rest of the week.

Though Harry glanced toward the staff table automatically when he entered the Great Hall, it was without real hope of seeing Hagrid.

He turned his mind immediately to his more pressing problems, such as the mountainous pile of homework he had to do and the prospect of yet another detention with Umbridge.

Two things sustained Harry that day.

One was the thought that it was almost the weekend.

The other was that, dreadful though his final detention with Umbridge was sure to be, he had a distant view of the Quidditch pitch from her window and might, with luck, be able to see something of Ron's tryout.

These were rather feeble rays of light, it was true, but Harry was grateful for anything that might lighten his present darkness.

He had never had a worse first week of term at Hogwarts.

At five o'clock that evening he knocked on Professor Umbridge's office door for what he sincerely hoped would be the final time.

He was told to enter and did so.

The blank parchment lay ready for him on the lace-covered table, the pointed black quill beside it.

"You know what to do, Mr. Potter," said Umbridge, smiling sweetly over at him.

Harry picked up the quill and glanced through the window.

If he just shifted his chair an inch or so to the right . . .

On the pretext of shifting himself closer to the table he managed it.

He now had a distant view of the Gryffindor Quidditch team soaring up and down the pitch, while half a dozen black figures stood at the foot of the three high goalposts, apparently awaiting their turn to Keep.

It was impossible to tell which one was Ron at this distance.

I must not tell lies, Harry wrote.

The cut in the back of his right hand opened and began to bleed afresh.

I must not tell lies.

The cut dug deeper, stinging and smarting.

I must not tell lies.

Blood trickled down his wrist.

He chanced another glance out of the window.

Whoever was defending the goalposts now was doing a very poor job indeed.

Katie Bell scored twice in the few seconds Harry dared watch.

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Hoping very much that the Keeper wasn't Ron, he dropped his eyes back to the parchment dotted with blood.

I must not tell lies.

I must not tell lies.

He looked up whenever he thought he could risk it, when he could hear the scratching of Umbridge's quill or the opening of a desk drawer.

The third person to try out was pretty good.

The fourth was terrible.

The fifth dodged a Bludger exceptionally well but then fumbled an easy save.

The sky was darkening so that Harry doubted he would be able to watch the sixth and seventh people at all.

I must not tell lies.

I must not tell lies.

The parchment was now shining with drops of blood from the back of his hand, which was searing with pain.

When he next looked up, night had fallen and the Quidditch pitch was no longer visible.

"Let's see if you've gotten the message yet, shall we?" said Umbridge's soft voice half an hour later.

She moved toward him, stretching out her short be-ringed fingers for his arm.

And then, as she took hold of him to examine the words now cut into his skin, pain seared, not across the back of his hand, but across the scar on his forehead.

At the same time, he had a most peculiar sensation somewhere around his midriff.

He wrenched his arm out of her grip and leapt to his feet, staring at her.

She looked back at him, a smile stretching her wide, slack mouth.

"Yes, it hurts, doesn't it?" she said softly.

He did not answer.

His heart was thumping very hard and fast.

Was she talking about his hand or did she know what he had just felt in his forehead?

"Well, I think I've made my point, Mr. Potter. You may go."

He caught up his schoolbag and left the room as quickly as he could.

Stay calm, he told himself as he sprinted up the stairs.

Stay calm, it doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. . . .

"Mimbulus mimbletonia!" he gasped at the Fat Lady, who swung forward once more.

A roar of sound greeted him.

Ron came running toward him, beaming all over his face and slopping butterbeer down his front from the goblet he was clutching.

"Harry, I did it, I'm in, I'm Keeper!"

"What? Oh — brilliant!" said Harry, trying to smile naturally, while his heart continued to race and his hand throbbed and bled.

"Have a butterbeer."

Ron pressed a bottle onto him.

"I can't believe it — where's Hermione gone?"

"She's there," said Fred, who was also swigging butterbeer, and pointed to an armchair by the fire.

Hermione was dozing in it, her drink tipping precariously in her hand.

"Well, she said she was pleased when I told her," said Ron, looking slightly put out.

"Let her sleep," said George hastily.

It was a few moments before Harry noticed that several of the first years gathered around them bore unmistakable signs of recent nosebleeds.

"Come here, Ron, and see if Oliver's old robes fit you," called Katie Bell.

"We can take off his name and put yours on instead . . ."

As Ron moved away, Angelina came striding up to Harry.

"Sorry I was a bit short with you earlier, Potter," she said abruptly.

"It's stressful, this managing lark, you know, I'm starting to think I was a bit hard on Wood sometimes."

She was watching Ron over the rim of her goblet with a slight frown on her face.

“Look, I know he’s your best mate, but he’s not fabulous,” she said bluntly.

“I think with a bit of training he’ll be all right, though.”

“He comes from a family of good Quidditch players.”

“I’m banking on him turning out to have a bit more talent than he showed today, to be honest.”

“Vicky Frobisher and Geoffrey Hooper both flew better this evening, but Hooper’s a real whiner, he’s always moaning about something or other, and Vicky’s involved in all sorts of societies, she admitted herself that if training clashed with her Charm Club she’d put Charms first.”

“Anyway, we’re having a practice session at two o’clock tomorrow, so just make sure you’re there this time.”

“And do me a favor and help Ron as much as you can, okay?”

He nodded and Angelina strolled back to Alicia Spinnet.

Harry moved over to sit next to Hermione, who awoke with a jerk as he put down his bag.

“Oh, Harry, it’s you. . . . Good about Ron, isn’t it?” she said blearily.

“I’m just so — so — so tired,” she yawned.

“I was up until one o’clock making more hats.”

“They’re disappearing like mad!”

And sure enough, now that he looked, Harry saw that there were woolly hats concealed all around the room where unwary elves might accidentally pick them up.

“Great,” said Harry distractedly; if he did not tell somebody soon, he would burst.

“Listen, Hermione, I was just up in Umbridge’s office and she touched my arm . . .”

Hermione listened closely.

When Harry had finished she said slowly, “You’re worried that You-Know-Who’s controlling her like he controlled Quirrell?”

“Well,” said Harry, dropping his voice, “it’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” said Hermione, though she sounded unconvinced.

“But I don’t think he can be possessing her the way he possessed Quirrell, I mean, he’s properly alive again now, isn’t he, he’s got his own body, he wouldn’t need to share someone else’s.”

“He could have her under the Imperius Curse, I suppose . . .”

Harry watched Fred, George, and Lee Jordan juggling empty butterbeer bottles for a moment.

Then Hermione said, “But last year your scar hurt when nobody was touching you, and didn’t Dumbledore say it had to do with what You-Know-Who was feeling at the time?”

“I mean, maybe this hasn’t got anything to do with Umbridge at all, maybe it’s just coincidence it happened while you were with her?”

“She’s evil,” said Harry flatly.

“Twisted.”

“She’s horrible, yes, but . . . Harry, I think you ought to tell Dumbledore your scar hurt.”

It was the second time in two days he had been advised to go to Dumbledore and his answer to Hermione was just the same as his answer to Ron.

“I’m not bothering him with this.”

“Like you just said, it’s not a big deal.”

“It’s been hurting on and off all summer — it was just a bit worse tonight, that’s all —”

“Harry, I’m sure Dumbledore would want to be bothered by this —”

“Yeah,” said Harry, before he could stop himself, “that’s the only bit of me Dumbledore cares about, isn’t it, my scar?”

“Don’t say that, it’s not true!”

“I think I’ll write and tell Sirius about it, see what he thinks —”

“Harry, you can’t put something like that in a letter!” said Hermione, looking alarmed.

“Don’t you remember, Moody told us to be careful what we put in writing!”

“We just can’t guarantee owls aren’t being intercepted anymore!”

“All right, all right, I won’t tell him, then!” said Harry irritably.

He got to his feet.

“I’m going to bed.”

“Tell Ron for me, will you?”

“Oh no,” said Hermione, looking relieved, “if you’re going that means I can go without being rude too, I’m absolutely exhausted and I want to make some more hats tomorrow.”

“Listen, you can help me if you like, it’s quite fun, I’m getting better, I can do patterns and bobbles and all sorts of things now.”

Harry looked into her face, which was shining with glee, and tried to look as though he was vaguely tempted by this offer.

“Er . . . no, I don’t think I will, thanks,” he said.

“Er — not tomorrow.”

“I’ve got loads of homework to do . . .”

And he traipsed off to the boys’ stairs, leaving her looking slightly disappointed behind him.

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CHAPTER XIV. PERCY AND PADFOOT

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Harry was the first to awake in his dormitory next morning.

He lay for a moment watching dust swirl in the chink of sunlight falling through the gap in his four-poster’s hangings and savored the thought that it was Saturday.

The first week of term seemed to have dragged on forever, like one gigantic History of Magic lesson.

Judging by the sleepy silence and the freshly minted look of that beam of sunlight, it was just after daybreak.

He pulled open the curtains around his bed, got up, and started to dress.

The only sound apart from the distant twittering of birds was the slow, deep breathing of his fellow Gryffindors.

He opened his schoolbag carefully, pulled out parchment and quill, and headed out of the dormitory for the common room.

Making straight for his favorite squashy old armchair beside the now extinct fire, Harry settled himself down comfortably and unrolled his parchment while looking around the room.

The detritus of crumpled-up bits of parchment, old Gobstones, empty ingredient jars, and candy wrappers that usually covered the common room at the end of each day was gone, as were all Hermione’s elf hats.

Wondering vaguely how many elves had now been set free whether they wanted to be or not, Harry uncorked his ink bottle, dipped his quill into it, and then held it suspended an inch above the smooth yellowish surface of his parchment, thinking hard. . . .

But after a minute or so he found himself staring into the empty grate, at a complete loss for what to say.

He could now appreciate how hard it had been for Ron and Hermione to write him letters over the summer.

How was he supposed to tell Sirius everything that had happened over the past week and pose all the questions he was burning to ask without giving potential letter-thieves a lot of information he did not want them to have?

He sat quite motionless for a while, gazing into the fireplace, then, finally coming to a decision, he dipped his quill into the ink bottle once more and set it resolutely upon the parchment.

Dear Snuffles,

Hope you’re okay, the first week back here’s been terrible, I’m really glad it’s the weekend.

We’ve got a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Umbridge.

She’s nearly as nice as your mum.

I’m writing because that thing I wrote to you about last summer happened again last night when I was doing a detention with Umbridge.

We’re all missing our biggest friend, we hope he’ll be back soon.

Please write back quickly.

Best, Harry

Harry reread this letter several times, trying to see it from the point of view of an outsider.

He could not see how they would know what he was talking about — or who he was talking to — just from reading this letter.

He did hope Sirius would pick up the hint about Hagrid and tell them when he might be back.

Harry did not want to ask directly in case it drew too much attention to what Hagrid might be up to while he was not at Hogwarts.

Considering it was a very short letter it had taken a long time to write; sunlight had crept halfway across the room while he had been working on it, and he could now hear distant sounds of movement from the dormitories above.

Sealing the parchment carefully he climbed through the portrait hole and headed off for the Owlery.

“I would not go that way if I were you,” said Nearly Headless Nick, drifting disconcertingly through a wall just ahead of him as he walked down the passage.

“Peeves is planning an amusing joke on the next person to pass the bust of Paracelsus halfway down the corridor.”

“Does it involve Paracelsus falling on top of the person’s head?” asked Harry.

“Funnily enough, it does,” said Nearly Headless Nick in a bored voice.

“Subtlety has never been Peeves’s strong point.”

“I’m off to try and find the Bloody Baron. . . . He might be able to put a stop to it. . . . See you, Harry . . .”

“Yeah, ’bye,” said Harry and instead of turning right, he turned left, taking a longer but safer route up to the Owlery.

His spirits rose as he walked past window after window showing brilliantly blue sky; he had training later, he would be back on the Quidditch pitch at last —

Something brushed his ankles.

He looked down and saw the caretaker’s skeletal gray cat, Mrs. Norris, slinking past him.

She turned lamplike yellow eyes upon him for a moment before disappearing behind a statue of Wilfred the Wistful.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” Harry called after her.

She had the unmistakable air of a cat that was off to report to her boss, yet Harry could not see why; he was perfectly entitled to walk up to the Owlery on a Saturday morning.

The sun was high in the sky now and when Harry entered the Owlery the glassless windows dazzled his eyes; thick silvery beams of sunlight crisscrossed the circular room in which hundreds of owls nestled on rafters, a little restless in the early morning light, some clearly just returned from hunting.

The straw-covered floor crunched a little as he stepped across tiny animal bones, craning his neck for a sight of Hedwig.

“There you are,” he said, spotting her somewhere near the very top of the vaulted ceiling.

“Get down here, I’ve got a letter for you.”

With a low hoot she stretched her great white wings and soared down onto his shoulder.

“Right, I know this says ‘Snuffles’ on the outside,” he told her, giving her the letter to clasp in her beak and, without knowing exactly why, whispering, “but it’s for Sirius, okay?”

She blinked her amber eyes once and he took that to mean that she understood.

“Safe flight, then,” said Harry and he carried her to one of the windows.

With a moment’s pressure on his arm Hedwig took off into the blindingly bright sky.

He watched her until she became a tiny black speck and vanished, then switched his gaze to Hagrid’s hut, clearly visible from this window, and just as clearly uninhabited, the chimney smokeless, the curtains drawn.

The treetops of the Forbidden Forest swayed in a light breeze.

Harry watched them, savoring the fresh air on his face, thinking about Quidditch later . . . and then he saw it.

A great, reptilian winged horse, just like the ones pulling the Hogwarts carriages, with leathery black wings spread wide like a pterodactyl’s, rose up out of the trees like a grotesque, giant bird.

It soared in a great circle and then plunged once more into the trees.

The whole thing had happened so quickly Harry could hardly believe what he had seen, except that his heart was hammering madly.

The Owlery door opened behind him.

He leapt in shock, and turning quickly, saw Cho Chang holding a letter and a parcel in her hands.

“Hi,” said Harry automatically.

“Oh . . . hi,” she said breathlessly.

“I didn’t think anyone would be up here this early. . . . I only remembered five minutes ago, it’s my mum’s birthday.”

She held up the parcel.

“Right,” said Harry.

His brain seemed to have jammed.

He wanted to say something funny and interesting, but the memory of that terrible winged horse was fresh in his mind.

“Nice day,” he said, gesturing to the windows.

His insides seemed to shrivel with embarrassment.

The weather. He was talking about the weather. . . .

“Yeah,” said Cho, looking around for a suitable owl.

“Good Quidditch conditions. I haven’t been out all week, have you?”

“No,” said Harry.

Cho had selected one of the school barn owls.

She coaxed it down onto her arm where it held out an obliging leg so that she could attach the parcel.

“Hey, has Gryffindor got a new Keeper yet?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Harry. “It’s my friend Ron Weasley, d’you know him?”

“The Tornado-hater?” said Cho rather coolly.

“Is he any good?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, “I think so. I didn’t see his tryout, though, I was in detention.”

Cho looked up, the parcel only half-attached to the owl’s legs.

“That Umbridge woman’s foul,” she said in a low voice.

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“Putting you in detention just because you told the truth about how — how — how he died. Everyone heard about it, it was all over the school.”

“You were really brave standing up to her like that.”

Harry’s insides reinflated so rapidly he felt as though he might actually float a few inches off the dropping-strewn floor.

Who cared about a stupid flying horse, Cho thought he had been really brave. . . .

For a moment he considered accidentally-on-purpose showing her his cut hand as he helped her tie her parcel onto her owl. . . .

But the very instant that this thrilling thought occurred, the Owlery door opened again.

Filch, the caretaker, came wheezing into the room.

There were purple patches on his sunken, veined cheeks, his jowls were aquiver and his thin gray hair disheveled; he had obviously run here.

Mrs. Norris came trotting at his heels, gazing up at the owls overhead and mewing hungrily.

There was a restless shifting of wings from above, and a large brown owl snapped his beak in a menacing fashion.

“Aha!” said Filch, taking a flat-footed step toward Harry, his pouchy cheeks trembling with anger.

“I’ve had a tip-off that you are intending to place a massive order for Dungbombs!”

Harry folded his arms and stared at the caretaker.

“Who told you I was ordering Dungbombs?”

Cho was looking from Harry to Filch, also frowning; the barn owl on her arm, tired of standing on one leg, gave an admonitory hoot but she ignored it.

“I have my sources,” said Filch in a self-satisfied hiss.

“Now hand over whatever it is you’re sending.”

Feeling immensely thankful that he had not dawdled in posting off the letter, Harry said, “I can’t, it’s gone.”

“Gone?” said Filch, his face contorting with rage.

“Gone,” said Harry calmly.

Filch opened his mouth furiously, mouthed for a few seconds, then raked Harry’s robes with his eyes.

“How do I know you haven’t got it in your pocket?”

“Because —”

“I saw him send it,” said Cho angrily.

Filch rounded on her.

“You saw him — ?”

“That’s right, I saw him,” she said fiercely.

There was a moment’s pause in which Filch glared at Cho and Cho glared right back.

Then the caretaker turned and shuffled back toward the door.

He stopped with his hand on the handle and looked back at Harry.

“If I get so much as a whiff of a Dungbomb . . .”

He stumped off down the stairs.

Mrs. Norris cast a last longing look at the owls and followed him.

Harry and Cho looked at each other.

“Thanks,” Harry said.

“No problem,” said Cho, finally fixing the parcel to the barn owl’s other leg, her face slightly pink.

“You weren’t ordering Dungbombs, were you?”

“No,” said Harry.

“I wonder why he thought you were, then?” she said, as she carried the owl to the window.

Harry shrugged; he was quite as mystified by that as she was, though, oddly, it was not bothering him very much at the moment.

They left the Owlery together.

At the entrance of a corridor that led toward the west wing of the castle, Cho said, “I’m going this way.”

“Well, I’ll . . . I’ll see you around, Harry.”

“Yeah . . . see you.”

She smiled at him and departed.

He walked on, feeling quietly elated.

He had managed to have an entire conversation with her and not embarrassed himself once.

You were really brave standing up to her like that.

She had called him brave.

She did not hate him for being alive.

Of course, she had preferred Cedric, he knew that.

Though if he’d only asked her to the ball before Cedric had, things might have turned out differently.

She had seemed sincerely sorry that she had to refuse when Harry had asked her.

“Morning,” Harry said brightly to Ron and Hermione, joining them at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall.

“What are you looking so pleased about?” said Ron, eyeing Harry in surprise.

“Erm . . . Quidditch later,” said Harry happily, pulling a large platter of bacon and eggs toward him.

“Oh . . . yeah . . .” said Ron.

He put down the bit of toast he was eating and took a large swig of pumpkin juice.

Then he said, “Listen . . . you don’t fancy going out a bit earlier with me, do you?”

“Just to — er — give me some practice before training? So I can, you know, get my eye in a bit . . .”

“Yeah, okay,” said Harry.

“Look, I don’t think you should,” said Hermione seriously, “you’re both really behind on homework as it —”

But she broke off; the morning post was arriving and, as usual, the Daily Prophet was soaring toward her in the beak of a screech owl.

It landed perilously close to the sugar bowl and held out a leg.

Hermione pushed a Knut into its leather pouch, took the newspaper, and scanned the front page critically as the owl took off again.

“Anything interesting?” said Ron.

Harry smiled — he knew Ron was keen to get her off the subject of homework.

“No,” she sighed.

“Just some guff about the bass player in the Weird Sisters getting married.”

She opened the paper and disappeared behind it.

Harry devoted himself to another helping of eggs and bacon.

Ron was staring up at the high windows, looking slightly preoccupied.

“Wait a moment,” said Hermione suddenly.

“Oh no . . . Sirius!”

“What’s happened?” said Harry.

He snatched at the paper so violently that it ripped down the middle so that he and Hermione were holding half each.

“‘The Ministry of Magic has received a tip-off from a reliable source that Sirius Black, notorious mass murderer . . . blah blah blah . . . is currently hiding in London!’” Hermione read from her half in an anguished whisper.

“Lucius Malfoy, I’ll bet anything,” said Harry in a low, furious voice.

“He did recognize Sirius on the platform . . .”

“What?” said Ron, looking alarmed.

“You didn’t say —”

“Shh!” said the other two.

“. . . ‘Ministry warns Wizarding community that Black is very dangerous . . . killed thirteen people . . . broke out of Azkaban . . .’ the usual rubbish,” Hermione concluded, laying down her half of the paper and looking fearfully at Harry and Ron.

“Well, he just won’t be able to leave the house again, that’s all,” she whispered.

“Dumbledore did warn him not to.”

Harry looked down glumly at the bit of the Prophet he had torn off.

Most of the page was devoted to an advertisement for Madame Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions, which was apparently having a sale.

“Hey!” he said, flattening it down so Hermione and Ron could both see it.

“Look at this!”

“I’ve got all the robes I want,” said Ron.

“No,” said Harry.

“Look . . . this little piece here . . .”

Ron and Hermione bent closer to read it.

The item was barely an inch long and placed right at the bottom of a column.

It was headlined:

TRESPASS AT MINISTRY

Sturgis Podmore, 38, of number two, Laburnum Gardens, Clapham, has appeared in front of the Wizengamot charged with trespass and attempted robbery at the Ministry of Magic on 31st August.

Podmore was arrested by Ministry of Magic watchwizard Eric Munch, who found him attempting to force his way through a top-security door at one o’clock in the morning.

Podmore, who refused to speak in his own defense, was convicted on both charges and sentenced to six months in Azkaban.

“Sturgis Podmore?” said Ron slowly.

“But he’s that bloke who looks like his head’s been thatched, isn’t he? He’s one of the Ord —”

“Ron, shh!” said Hermione, casting a terrified look around them.

“Six months in Azkaban!” whispered Harry, shocked.

“Just for trying to get through a door!”

“Don’t be silly, it wasn’t just for trying to get through a door — what on earth was he doing at the Ministry of Magic at one o’clock in the morning?” breathed Hermione.

“D’you reckon he was doing something for the Order?” Ron muttered.

“Wait a moment . . .” said Harry slowly.

“Sturgis was supposed to come and see us off, remember?”

The other two looked at him.

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“Yeah, he was supposed to be part of our guard going to King’s Cross, remember?”

“And Moody was all annoyed because he didn’t turn up, so that doesn’t seem like he was supposed to be on a job for them, does it?”

“Well, maybe they didn’t expect him to get caught,” said Hermione.

“It could be a frame-up!” Ron exclaimed excitedly.

“No — listen!” he went on, dropping his voice dramatically at the threatening look on Hermione’s face.

“The Ministry suspects he’s one of Dumbledore’s lot so — I dunno — they lured him to the Ministry, and he wasn’t trying to get through a door at all!”

“Maybe they’ve just made something up to get him!”

There was a pause while Harry and Hermione considered this.

Harry thought it seemed far-fetched.

Hermione, on the other hand, looked rather impressed and said, “Do you know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were true.”

She folded up her half of the newspaper thoughtfully.

When Harry laid down his knife and fork she seemed to come out of a reverie.

“Right, well, I think we should tackle that essay for Sprout on Self-Fertilizing Shrubs first, and if we’re lucky we’ll be able to start McGonagall’s Inanimatus Conjurus before lunch . . .”

Harry felt a small twinge of guilt at the thought of the pile of homework awaiting him upstairs.

But the sky was a clear, exhilarating blue, and he had not been on his Firebolt all week. . . .

“I mean, we can do it tonight,” said Ron, as he and Harry walked down the sloping lawns toward the Quidditch pitch, their broomsticks over their shoulders.

Hermione’s dire warnings that they would fail all their O.W.L.s still ringing in their ears.

“And we’ve got tomorrow.”

“She gets too worked up about work, that’s her trouble . . .”

There was a pause and he added, in a slightly more anxious tone, “D’you think she meant it when she said we weren’t copying from her?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Harry.

“Still, this is important too, we’ve got to practice if we want to stay on the Quidditch team . . .”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Ron in a heartened tone.

“And we have got plenty of time to do it all . . .”

Harry glanced over to his right as they approached the Quidditch pitch, to where the trees of the Forbidden Forest were swaying darkly.

Nothing flew out of them; the sky was empty but for a few distant owls fluttering around the Owlery Tower.

He had enough to worry about; the flying horse wasn’t doing him any harm: He pushed it out of his mind.

They collected balls from the cupboard in the changing room and set to work, Ron guarding the three tall goalposts, Harry playing Chaser and trying to get the Quaffle past Ron.

Harry thought Ron was pretty good; he blocked three-quarters of the goals Harry attempted to put past him and played better the longer they practiced.

After a couple of hours they returned to the school, where they ate lunch, during which Hermione made it quite clear that she thought they were irresponsible, then returned to the Quidditch pitch for the real training session.

All their teammates but Angelina were already in the changing room when they entered.

“All right, Ron?” said George, winking at him.

“Yeah,” said Ron, who had become quieter and quieter all the way down to the pitch.

“Ready to show us all up, Ickle Prefect?” said Fred, emerging tousle-haired from the neck of his Quidditch robes, a slightly malicious grin on his face.

“Shut up,” said Ron, stony-faced, pulling on his own team robes for the first time.

They fitted him well considering they had been Oliver Wood’s, who was rather broader in the shoulder.

“Okay everyone,” said Angelina, entering from the Captain’s office, already changed.

“Let’s get to it; Alicia and Fred, if you can just bring the ball crate out for us.

Oh, and there are a couple of people out there watching but I want you to just ignore them, all right?”

Something in her would-be casual voice made Harry think he might know who the uninvited spectators were, and sure enough, when they left the changing room for the bright sunlight of the pitch it was to a storm of catcalls and jeers from the Slytherin Quidditch team and assorted hangers-on, who were grouped halfway up the empty stands and whose voices echoed loudly around the stadium.

“What’s that Weasley’s riding?” Malfoy called in his sneering drawl.

“Why would anyone put a Flying Charm on a moldy old log like that?”

Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson guffawed and shrieked with laughter.

Ron mounted his broom and kicked off from the ground and Harry followed him, watching his ears turn red from behind.

“Ignore them,” he said, accelerating to catch up with Ron.

“We’ll see who’s laughing after we play them . . .”

“Exactly the attitude I want, Harry,” said Angelina approvingly, soaring around them with the Quaffle under her arm and slowing to hover on the spot in front of her airborne team.

“Okay everyone, we’re going to start with some passes just to warm up, the whole team please —”

“Hey, Johnson, what’s with that hairstyle anyway?” shrieked Pansy Parkinson from below.

“Why would anyone want to look like they’ve got worms coming out of their head?”

Angelina swept her long braided hair out of her face and said calmly, “Spread out, then, and let’s see what we can do . . .”

Harry reversed away from the others to the far side of the pitch.

Ron fell back toward the opposite goal.

Angelina raised the Quaffle with one hand and threw it hard to Fred, who passed to George, who passed to Harry, who passed to Ron, who dropped it.

The Slytherins, led by Malfoy, roared and screamed with laughter.

Ron, who had pelted toward the ground to catch the Quaffle before it landed, pulled out of the dive untidily, so that he slipped sideways on his broom, and returned to playing height, blushing.

Harry saw Fred and George exchange looks, but uncharacteristically neither of them said anything, for which he was grateful.

“Pass it on, Ron,” called Angelina, as though nothing had happened.

Ron threw the Quaffle to Alicia, who passed back to Harry, who passed to George. . . .

“Hey, Potter, how’s your scar feeling?” called Malfoy.

“Sure you don’t need a lie-down?

It must be, what, a whole week since you were in the hospital wing, that’s a record for you, isn’t it?”

Fred passed to Angelina; she reverse passed to Harry, who had not been expecting it, but caught it in the very tips of his fingers and passed it quickly to Ron, who lunged for it and missed by inches.

“Come on now, Ron,” said Angelina crossly, as Ron dived for the ground again, chasing the Quaffle.

“Pay attention.”

It would have been hard to say whether Ron’s face or the Quaffle was a deeper scarlet when he returned again to playing height.

Malfoy and the rest of the Slytherin team were howling with laughter.

On his third attempt, Ron caught the Quaffle; perhaps out of relief he passed it on so enthusiastically that it soared straight through Katie’s outstretched hands and hit her hard in the face.

“Sorry!” Ron groaned, zooming forward to see whether he had done any damage.

“Get back in position, she’s fine!” barked Angelina.

“But as you’re passing to a teammate, do try not to knock her off her broom, won’t you?

We’ve got Bludgers for that!”

Katie’s nose was bleeding.

Down below the Slytherins were stamping their feet and jeering.

Fred and George converged on Katie.

“Here, take this,” Fred told her, handing her something small and purple from out of his pocket.

“It’ll clear it up in no time.”

“All right,” called Angelina.

“Fred, George, go and get your bats and a Bludger; Ron, get up to the goalposts, Harry, release the Snitch when I say so.

We’re going to aim for Ron’s goal, obviously.”

Harry zoomed off after the twins to fetch the Snitch.

“Ron’s making a right pig’s ear of things, isn’t he?” muttered George, as the three of them landed at the crate containing the balls and opened it to extract one of the Bludgers and the Snitch.

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“He’s just nervous,” said Harry.

“He was fine when I was practicing with him this morning.”

“Yeah, well, I hope he hasn’t peaked too soon,” said Fred gloomily.

They returned to the air.

When Angelina blew her whistle, Harry released the Snitch and Fred and George let fly the Bludger; from that moment on, Harry was barely aware of what the others were doing.

It was his job to recapture the tiny fluttering golden ball that was worth a hundred and fifty points to the Seeker’s team and doing so required enormous speed and skill.

He accelerated, rolling and swerving in and out of the Chasers, the warm autumn air whipping his face and the distant yells of the Slytherins so much meaningless roaring in his ears. . . .

But too soon, the whistle brought him to a halt again.

“Stop — stop — STOP!” screamed Angelina.

“Ron — you’re not covering your middle post!”

Harry looked around at Ron, who was hovering in front of the left-hand hoop, leaving the other two completely unprotected.

“Oh . . . sorry . . .”

“You keep shifting around while you’re watching the Chasers!” said Angelina.

“Either stay in center position until you have to move to defend a hoop, or else circle the hoops, but don’t drift vaguely off to one side, that’s how you let in the last three goals!”

“Sorry . . .” Ron repeated, his red face shining like a beacon against the bright blue sky.

“And Katie, can’t you do something about that nosebleed?”

“It’s just getting worse!” said Katie thickly, attempting to stem the flow with her sleeve.

Harry glanced around at Fred, who was looking anxious and checking his pockets.

He saw Fred pull out something purple, examine it for a second, and then look around at Katie, evidently horrorstruck.

“Well, let’s try again,” said Angelina.

She was ignoring the Slytherins, who had now set up a chant of “Gryffindor are losers, Gryffindor are losers,” but there was a certain rigidity about her seat on the broom nevertheless.

This time they had been flying for barely three minutes when Angelina’s whistle sounded.

Harry, who had just sighted the Snitch circling the opposite goalpost, pulled up feeling distinctly aggrieved.

“What now?” he said impatiently to Alicia, who was nearest.

“Katie,” she said shortly.

Harry turned and saw Angelina, Fred, and George all flying as fast as they could toward Katie.

Harry and Alicia sped toward her too.

It was plain that Angelina had stopped training just in time; Katie was now chalk-white and covered in blood.

“She needs the hospital wing,” said Angelina.

“We’ll take her,” said Fred.

“She — er — might have swallowed a Blood Blisterpod by mistake —”

“Well, there’s no point continuing with no Beaters and a Chaser gone,” said Angelina glumly, as Fred and George zoomed off toward the castle supporting Katie between them.

“Come on, let’s go and get changed.”

The Slytherins continued to chant as they trailed back into the changing rooms.

“How was practice?” asked Hermione rather coolly half an hour later, as Harry and Ron climbed through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room.

“It was —” Harry began.

“Completely lousy,” said Ron in a hollow voice, sinking into a chair beside Hermione.

She looked up at Ron and her frostiness seemed to melt.

“Well, it was only your first one,” she said consolingly.

“It’s bound to take time to —”

“Who said it was me who made it lousy?” snapped Ron.

“No one,” said Hermione, looking taken aback, “I thought —”

“You thought I was bound to be rubbish?”

“No, of course I didn’t! Look, you said it was lousy so I just —”

“I’m going to get started on some homework,” said Ron angrily and stomped off to the staircase to the boys’ dormitories and vanished from sight.

Hermione turned to Harry.

“Was he lousy?”

“No,” said Harry loyally.

Hermione raised her eyebrows.

“Well, I suppose he could’ve played better,” Harry muttered, “but it was only the first training session, like you said . . .”

Neither Harry nor Ron seemed to make much headway with their homework that night.

Harry knew Ron was too preoccupied with how badly he had performed at Quidditch practice and he himself was having difficulty in getting the chant of “Gryffindor are losers” out of his head.

They spent the whole of Sunday in the common room, buried in their books while the room around them filled up, then emptied.

It was another clear, fine day and most of their fellow Gryffindors spent the day out in the grounds, enjoying what might well be some of the last sunshine that year.

By the evening Harry felt as though somebody had been beating his brain against the inside of his skull.

“You know, we probably should try and get more homework done during the week,” Harry muttered to Ron, as they finally laid aside Professor McGonagall’s long essay on the Inanimatus Conjurus spell and turned miserably to Professor Sinistra’s equally long and difficult essay about Jupiter’s moons.

“Yeah,” said Ron, rubbing slightly bloodshot eyes and throwing his fifth spoiled bit of parchment into the fire beside them.

“Listen . . . shall we just ask Hermione if we can have a look at what she’s done?”

Harry glanced over at her; she was sitting with Crookshanks on her lap and chatting merrily to Ginny as a pair of knitting needles flashed in midair in front of her, now knitting a pair of shapeless elf socks.

“No,” he said heavily, “you know she won’t let us.”

And so they worked on while the sky outside the windows became steadily darker.

Slowly, the crowd in the common room began to thin again.

At half-past eleven, Hermione wandered over to them, yawning.

“Nearly done?”

“No,” said Ron shortly.

“Jupiter’s biggest moon is Ganymede, not Callisto,” she said, pointing over Ron’s shoulder at a line in his Astronomy essay, “and it’s Io that’s got the volcanos.”

“Thanks,” snarled Ron, scratching out the offending sentences.

“Sorry, I only —”

“Yeah, well, if you’ve just come over here to criticize —”

“Ron —”

“I haven’t got time to listen to a sermon, all right, Hermione, I’m up to my neck in it here —”

“No — look!”

Hermione was pointing to the nearest window.

Harry and Ron both looked over.

A handsome screech owl was standing on the windowsill, gazing into the room at Ron.

“Isn’t that Hermes?” said Hermione, sounding amazed.

“Blimey, it is!” said Ron quietly, throwing down his quill and getting to his feet.

“What’s Percy writing to me for?”

He crossed to the window and opened it.

Hermes flew inside, landed upon Ron’s essay, and held out a leg to which a letter was attached.

Ron took it off and the owl departed at once, leaving inky footprints across Ron’s drawing of the moon Io.

“That’s definitely Percy’s handwriting,” said Ron, sinking back into his chair and staring at the words on the outside of the scroll: To Ronald Weasley, Gryffindor House, Hogwarts.

He looked up at the other two.

“What d’you reckon?”

“Open it!” said Hermione eagerly.

Harry nodded.

Ron unrolled the scroll and began to read.

The farther down the parchment his eyes traveled, the more pronounced became his scowl.

When he had finished reading, he looked disgusted.

He thrust the letter at Harry and Hermione, who leaned toward each other to read it together:

Dear Ron,

I have only just heard (from no less a person than the Minister of Magic himself, who has it from your new teacher, Professor Umbridge) that you have become a Hogwarts prefect.

I was most pleasantly surprised when I heard this news and must firstly offer my congratulations.

I must admit that I have always been afraid that you would take what we might call the “Fred and George” route, rather than following in my footsteps, so you can imagine my feelings on hearing you have stopped flouting authority and have decided to shoulder some real responsibility.

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But I want to give you more than congratulations, Ron, I want to give you some advice, which is why I am sending this at night rather than by the usual morning post.

Hopefully you will be able to read this away from prying eyes and avoid awkward questions.

From something the Minister let slip when telling me you are now a prefect, I gather that you are still seeing a lot of Harry Potter.

I must tell you, Ron, that nothing could put you in danger of losing your badge more than continued fraternization with that boy.

Yes, I am sure you are surprised to hear this — no doubt you will say that Potter has always been Dumbledore’s favorite — but I feel bound to tell you that Dumbledore may not be in charge at Hogwarts much longer and the people who count have a very different — and probably more accurate — view of Potter’s behavior.

I shall say no more here, but if you look at the Daily Prophet tomorrow you will get a good idea of the way the wind is blowing — and see if you can spot yours truly!

Seriously, Ron, you do not want to be tarred with the same brush as Potter, it could be very damaging to your future prospects, and I am talking here about life after school too.

As you must be aware, given that our father escorted him to court, Potter had a disciplinary hearing this summer in front of the whole Wizengamot and he did not come out of it looking too good.

He got off on a mere technicality if you ask me and many of the people I’ve spoken to remain convinced of his guilt.

It may be that you are afraid to sever ties with Potter — I know that he can be unbalanced and, for all I know, violent — but if you have any worries about this, or have spotted anything else in Potter’s behavior that is troubling you, I urge you to speak to Dolores Umbridge, a really delightful woman, who I know will be only too happy to advise you.

This leads me to my other bit of advice.

As I have hinted above, Dumbledore’s regime at Hogwarts may soon be over.

Your loyalty, Ron, should be not to him, but to the school and the Ministry.

I am very sorry to hear that so far Professor Umbridge is encountering very little cooperation from staff as she strives to make those necessary changes within Hogwarts that the Ministry so ardently desires (although she should find this easier from next week — again, see the Prophet tomorrow!).

I shall say only this — a student who shows himself willing to help Professor Umbridge now may be very well placed for Head Boyship in a couple of years!

I am sorry that I was unable to see more of you over the summer.

It pains me to criticize our parents, but I am afraid I can no longer live under their roof while they remain mixed up with the dangerous crowd around Dumbledore (if you are writing to Mother at any point, you might tell her that a certain Sturgis Podmore, who is a great friend of Dumbledore’s, has recently been sent to Azkaban for trespass at the Ministry).

Perhaps that will open their eyes to the kind of petty criminals with whom they are currently rubbing shoulders.

I count myself very lucky to have escaped the stigma of association with such people — the Minister really could not be more gracious to me — and I do hope, Ron, that you will not allow family ties to blind you to the misguided nature of our parents’ beliefs and actions either.

I sincerely hope that, in time, they will realize how mistaken they were and I shall, of course, be ready to accept a full apology when that day comes.

Please think over what I have said most carefully, particularly the bit about Harry Potter, and congratulations again on becoming prefect.

Your brother, Percy

Harry looked up at Ron.

“Well,” he said, trying to sound as though he found the whole thing a joke, “if you want to — er — what is it?” (He checked Percy’s letter.) “Oh yeah — ‘sever ties’ with me, I swear I won’t get violent.”

“Give it back,” said Ron, holding out his hand.

“He is —” Ron said jerkily, tearing Percy’s letter in half, “the world’s” — he tore it into quarters — “biggest” — he tore it into eighths — “git.”

He threw the pieces into the fire.

“Come on, we’ve got to get this finished some time before dawn,” he said briskly to Harry, pulling Professor Sinistra’s essay back toward him.

Hermione was looking at Ron with an odd expression on her face.

“Oh, give them here,” she said abruptly.

“What?” said Ron.

“Give them to me, I’ll look through them and correct them,” she said.

“Are you serious? Ah, Hermione, you’re a lifesaver,” said Ron, “what can I — ?”

“What you can say is, ‘We promise we’ll never leave our homework this late again,’” she said, holding out both hands for their essays, but she looked slightly amused all the same.

“Thanks a million, Hermione,” said Harry weakly, passing over his essay and sinking back into his armchair, rubbing his eyes.

It was now past midnight and the common room was deserted but for the three of them and Crookshanks.

The only sound was that of Hermione’s quill scratching out sentences here and there on their essays and the ruffle of pages as she checked various facts in the reference books strewn across the table.

Harry was exhausted.

He also felt an odd, sick, empty feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with tiredness and everything to do with the letter now curling blackly in the heart of the fire.

He knew that half the people inside Hogwarts thought him strange, even mad; he knew that the Daily Prophet had been making snide allusions to him for months, but there was something about seeing it written down like that in Percy’s writing, about knowing that Percy was advising Ron to drop him and even to tell tales on him to Umbridge, that made his situation real to him as nothing else had.

He had known Percy for four years, had stayed in his house during the summers, shared a tent with him during the Quidditch World Cup, had even been awarded full marks by him in the second task of the Triwizard Tournament last year, yet now, Percy thought him unbalanced and possibly violent.

And with a surge of sympathy for his godfather, Harry thought that Sirius was probably the only person he knew who could really understand how he felt at the moment, because Sirius was in the same situation; nearly everyone in the Wizarding world thought Sirius a dangerous murderer and a great Voldemort supporter and he had had to live with that knowledge for fourteen years. . . .

Harry blinked.

He had just seen something in the fire that could not have been there.

It had flashed into sight and vanished immediately.

No . . . it could not have been. . . .

He had imagined it because he had been thinking about Sirius. . . .

“Okay, write that down,” Hermione said to Ron, pushing his essay and a sheet covered in her own writing back to Ron, “and then copy out this conclusion that I’ve written for you.”

“Hermione, you are honestly the most wonderful person I’ve ever met,” said Ron weakly, “and if I’m ever rude to you again —”

“— I’ll know you’re back to normal,” said Hermione.

“Harry, yours is okay except for this bit at the end, I think you must have misheard Professor Sinistra, Europa’s covered in ice, not mice — Harry?”

Harry had slid off his chair onto his knees and was now crouching on the singed and threadbare hearthrug, gazing into the flames.

“Er — Harry?” said Ron uncertainly. “Why are you down there?”

“Because I’ve just seen Sirius’s head in the fire,” said Harry.

He spoke quite calmly; after all, he had seen Sirius’s head in this very fire the previous year and talked to it too.

Nevertheless, he could not be sure that he had really seen it this time. . . .

It had vanished so quickly. . . .

“Sirius’s head?” Hermione repeated.

“You mean like when he wanted to talk to you during the Triwizard Tournament?

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But he wouldn’t do that now, it would be too — Sirius!”

She gasped, gazing at the fire; Ron dropped his quill.

There in the middle of the dancing flames sat Sirius’s head, long dark hair falling around his grinning face.

“I was starting to think you’d go to bed before everyone else had disappeared,” he said.

“I’ve been checking every hour.”

“You’ve been popping into the fire every hour?” Harry said, half laughing.

“Just for a few seconds to check if the coast was clear yet.”

“But what if you’d been seen?” said Hermione anxiously.

“Well, I think a girl — first year by the look of her — might’ve got a glimpse of me earlier, but don’t worry,” Sirius said hastily, as Hermione clapped a hand to her mouth.

“I was gone the moment she looked back at me and I’ll bet she just thought I was an oddly shaped log or something.”

“But Sirius, this is taking an awful risk —” Hermione began.

“You sound like Molly,” said Sirius.

“This was the only way I could come up with of answering Harry’s letter without resorting to a code — and codes are breakable.”

At the mention of Harry’s letter, Hermione and Ron had both turned to stare at him.

“You didn’t say you’d written to Sirius!” said Hermione accusingly.

“I forgot,” said Harry, which was perfectly true; his meeting with Cho in the Owlery had driven everything before it out of his mind.

“Don’t look at me like that, Hermione, there was no way anyone would have got secret information out of it, was there, Sirius?”

“No, it was very good,” said Sirius, smiling.

“Anyway, we’d better be quick, just in case we’re disturbed — your scar.”

“What about — ?” Ron began, but Hermione said quickly, “We’ll tell you afterward, go on, Sirius.”

“Well, I know it can’t be fun when it hurts, but we don’t think it’s anything to really worry about.

It kept aching all last year, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, and Dumbledore said it happened whenever Voldemort was feeling a powerful emotion,” said Harry, ignoring, as usual, Ron and Hermione’s winces.

“So maybe he was just, I dunno, really angry or something the night I had that detention.”

“Well, now he’s back it’s bound to hurt more often,” said Sirius.

“So you don’t think it had anything to do with Umbridge touching me when I was in detention with her?” Harry asked.

“I doubt it,” said Sirius.

“I know her by reputation and I’m sure she’s no Death Eater —”

“She’s foul enough to be one,” said Harry darkly and Ron and Hermione nodded vigorously in agreement.

“Yes, but the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters,” said Sirius with a wry smile.

“I know she’s a nasty piece of work, though — you should hear Remus talk about her.”

“Does Lupin know her?” asked Harry quickly, remembering Umbridge’s comments about dangerous half-breeds during her first lesson.

“No,” said Sirius, “but she drafted a bit of anti-werewolf legislation two years ago that makes it almost impossible for him to get a job.”

Harry remembered how much shabbier Lupin looked these days and his dislike of Umbridge deepened even further.

“What’s she got against werewolves?” said Hermione angrily.

“Scared of them, I expect,” said Sirius, smiling at her indignation.

“Apparently she loathes part-humans; she campaigned to have merpeople rounded up and tagged last year too.

Imagine wasting your time and energy persecuting merpeople when there are little toerags like Kreacher on the loose —”

Ron laughed but Hermione looked upset.

“Sirius!” she said reproachfully.

“Honestly, if you made a bit of an effort with Kreacher I’m sure he’d respond, after all, you are the only member of his family he’s got left, and Professor Dumbledore said —”

“So what are Umbridge’s lessons like?” Sirius interrupted.

“Is she training you all to kill half-breeds?”

“No,” said Harry, ignoring Hermione’s affronted look at being cut off in her defense of Kreacher.

“She’s not letting us use magic at all!”

“All we do is read the stupid textbook,” said Ron.

“Ah, well, that figures,” said Sirius.

“Our information from inside the Ministry is that Fudge doesn’t want you trained in combat.”

“Trained in combat?” repeated Harry incredulously.

“What does he think we’re doing here, forming some sort of wizard army?”

“That’s exactly what he thinks you’re doing,” said Sirius, “or rather, that’s exactly what he’s afraid Dumbledore’s doing — forming his own private army, with which he will be able to take on the Ministry of Magic.”

There was a pause at this, then Ron said, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, including all the stuff that Luna Lovegood comes out with.”

“So we’re being prevented from learning Defense Against the Dark Arts because Fudge is scared we’ll use spells against the Ministry?” said Hermione, looking furious.

“Yep,” said Sirius.

“Fudge thinks Dumbledore will stop at nothing to seize power.

He’s getting more paranoid about Dumbledore by the day.

It’s a matter of time before he has Dumbledore arrested on some trumped-up charge.”

This reminded Harry of Percy’s letter.

“D’you know if there’s going to be anything about Dumbledore in the Daily Prophet tomorrow?

Only Ron’s brother Percy reckons there will be —”

“I don’t know,” said Sirius.

“I haven’t seen anyone from the Order all weekend, they’re all busy.

It’s just been Kreacher and me here . . .”

There was a definite note of bitterness in Sirius’s voice.

“So you haven’t had any news about Hagrid, either?”

“Ah . . .” said Sirius.

“Well, he was supposed to be back by now, no one’s sure what’s happened to him.”

Then, seeing their stricken faces, he added quickly, “But Dumbledore’s not worried, so don’t you three get yourselves in a state; I’m sure Hagrid’s fine.”

“But if he was supposed to be back by now . . .” said Hermione in a small, worried voice.

“Madame Maxime was with him, we’ve been in touch with her and she says they got separated on the journey home — but there’s nothing to suggest he’s hurt or — well, nothing to suggest he’s not perfectly okay.”

Unconvinced, Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged worried looks.

“Listen, don’t go asking too many questions about Hagrid,” said Sirius hastily, “it’ll just draw even more attention to the fact that he’s not back, and I know Dumbledore doesn’t want that.

Hagrid’s tough, he’ll be okay.”

And when they did not appear cheered by this, Sirius added, “When’s your next Hogsmeade weekend anyway? I was thinking, we got away with the dog disguise at the station, didn’t we? I thought I could —”

“NO!” said Harry and Hermione together, very loudly.

“Sirius, didn’t you see the Daily Prophet?” said Hermione anxiously.

“Oh that,” said Sirius, grinning, “they’re always guessing where I am, they haven’t really got a clue —”

“Yeah, but we think this time they have,” said Harry. “Something Malfoy said on the train made us think he knew it was you, and his father was on the platform, Sirius — you know, Lucius Malfoy — so don’t come up here, whatever you do, if Malfoy recognizes you again —”

“All right, all right, I’ve got the point,” said Sirius. He looked most displeased. “Just an idea, thought you might like to get together —”

“I would, I just don’t want you chucked back in Azkaban!” said Harry.

There was a pause in which Sirius looked out of the fire at Harry, a crease between his sunken eyes.

“You’re less like your father than I thought,” he said finally, a definite coolness in his voice. “The risk would’ve been what made it fun for James.”

“Look —”

“Well, I’d better get going, I can hear Kreacher coming down the stairs,” said Sirius, but Harry was sure he was lying. “I’ll write to tell you a time I can make it back into the fire, then, shall I? If you can stand to risk it?”

There was a tiny pop, and the place where Sirius’s head had been was flickering flame once more.