Harry was first to wake up in his dormitory next morning. He
lay for a moment watching dust swirl in the ray of sunlight coming through the
gap in his four-posters hangings, and savoured the thought that it was Saturday.
The first week of term seemed to have dragged on for ever, 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
favourite 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 sweet 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, 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 on the
parchment.
Dear Snuffles,
Hope you're OK, the first week back here's been
terrible, I'm really
glad it's the weekend.
We've got a new Defence
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 the 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 Harry 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 persons 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 grey cat, Mrs Norns, slinking past him. She turned lamplike
yellow eyes on 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 unmistakeable 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 on to 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,
OK?”
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, savouring the fresh air on his face, thinking about Quidditch
later...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, then plunged back 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 on to
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
Tornados-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. “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 re-inflated 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 on to her owl...but the very instant 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 grey hair dishevelled; 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 towards 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 moments pause in which Filch glared at
Cho and Cho glared right back, then the caretaker turned on his heel and
shuffled back towards 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 towards 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. Harry 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...Cho 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'd had to
refuse when Harry asked her...
“Morning,” Harry said brightly to Ron and
Hermione as he joined 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 towards him.
“Oh...yeah...” said Ron. He put down
the piece 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, OK,” 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 towards her in the beak of a screech owl, which 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.
“Anything interesting?” said Ron. Harry grinned, knowing Ron was keen to
keep her off the subject of homework.
“No,” she sighed, “just some guff about
the bass player in the Weird Sisters getting married.”
Hermione 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, snatching at the paper so
violently it ripped down the middle, with him and Hermione each holding one
half.
“"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 recognise 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
Madam Malkins Robes for All Occasions, which was apparently having a
sale.
“Hey!” he said, flattening it down so Hermione and Ron could 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 3ISI
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 defence, was convicted
on both charges and sentenced to six months in Azkaban.
“Sturgis Podmore?”
said Ron slowly. “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.
“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 he couldn't
have been on a job for them, could he?”
“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.
“Do you know, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were
true.”
She folded up her half of the newspaper thoughtfully. As 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-fertilising shrubs first
and if we're lucky we'll be able to start McGonagall's Inanimatus Conjurus Spell
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 for a week...
“I mean, we can do it
tonight,” said Ron, as he and Harry walked down the sloping lawns towards the
Quidditch pitch, their broomsticks over their shoulders, and with Hermione's
dire warnings that they would fail all their OWLs 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 practise 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...”
As they
approached the Quidditch pitch, Harry glanced over to his right 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 practised. After a couple of hours they returned
to the castle for lunch—during which Hermione made it quite clear 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.
“OK, everyone,” said Angelina,
entering from the Captain's office, already changed. “Let's get to it; Alicia
and Fred, if you can just bring out the ball crate 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 mouldy 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.
“OK, 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 continued 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 towards 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 towards 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?”
George
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 he 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 again returned 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 forwards 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.
“He's just nervous,” said
Harry, “he was fine when I was practising 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 round 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 centre 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 round 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 round at Katie, evidently horror-struck.
“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 Angelinas 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 towards Katie. Harry and Alicia sped
towards 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 towards 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 “Gryffindor are losers” chant 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 many
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 to that's got the volcanoes.”
“Thanks,” snarled Ron,
scratching out the offending sentences.
“Sorry, I only—”
“Yeah, well, if
you've just come over here to criticise—”
“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 on Ron's essay and held out a
leg to which a letter was attached. Ron took the letter off it and the owl
departed at once, leaving inky footprints across Ron's drawing of the moon
lo.
“That's definitely Percy's handwriting,” said Ron, sinking back into his
chair and staring at the words on the outside of the scroll: Ronald Weasley,
Gryffindor House, Hogwarts. He looked up at the other two. “What d'you
reckon?”
“Open it!” said Hermione eagerly, and Harry nodded.
Ron unrolled
the scroll and began to read. The further down the parchment his eyes travelled,
the more pronounced became his scowl. When he had finished reading, he looked
disgusted. He thrust the letter at Harry and Hermione, who leaned towards each
other to read it together:
Dear Ron,
I have only just heard (from no less
a person than the Minister for 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.
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 fraternisation 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
favourite—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 behaviour. 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 behaviour that is troubling you, I
urge you to speak to Dolores Umbridge, a truly 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
co-operation 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 Daily 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 criticise 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 realise 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 sometime before dawn,” he said
briskly to Harry, pulling Professor Sinistra's essay back towards
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 life-saver,” 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 about 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 summer holidays, 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 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...
“OK, write that down,” Hermione said to Ron,
pushing his essay and a sheet covered in her own writing back to Ron, “then add
this conclusion 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
OK 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 on to 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? 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.”
“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 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 interrupted him. . “We'll tell you afterwards. 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 defence 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 most stupid thing I've ever heard, including all the stuff
that Luna Lovegood comes out with.”
“So we're being prevented from learning
Defence 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? 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, anxious 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 OK.”
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 OK.” 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
recognises 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. “Til 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.