Harry's question was answered the very next morning. When
Hermione's Daily Prophet arrived she smoothed it out, gazed for a moment at the
front page and gave a yelp that caused everyone in the vicinity to stare at
her.
“What?” said Harry and Ron together.
For answer she spread the
newspaper on the table in front of them and pointed at ten black-and-white
photographs that filled the whole of the front page, nine showing wizards’ faces
and the tenth, a witch's. Some of the people in the photographs were silently
jeering; others were tapping their fingers on the frame of their pictures,
looking insolent. Each picture was captioned with a name and the crime for which
the person had been sent to Azkaban.
Antonin Dolohov, read the legend beneath
a wizard with a long, pale, twisted face who was sneering up at Harry, convicted
of the brutal murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett.
Algernon Rookwood, said
the caption beneath a pockmarked man with greasy hair who was leaning against
the edge of his picture, looking bored, convicted of leaking Ministry of Magic
secrets to He Who Must Not Be Named.
But Harry's eyes were drawn to the
picture of the witch. Her face had leapt out at him the moment he had seen the
page. She had long, dark hair that looked unkempt and straggly in the picture,
though he had seen it sleek, thick and shining. She glared up at him through
heavily lidded eyes, an arrogant, disdainful smile playing around her thin
mouth. Like Sirius, she retained vestiges of great good looks, but
something—perhaps Azkaban—had taken most of her beauty.
Bellatrix Lestrange,
convicted of the torture and permanent inca-pacitation of Frank and Alice
Longbottom.
Hermione nudged Harry and pointed at the headline over the
pictures, which Harry, concentrating on Bellatrix, had not yet read.
MASS
BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN
MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS “RALLYING POINT”
FOR OLD
DEATH EATERS
“Black?” said Harry loudly. “Not -?”
“Shhh!” whispered
Hermione desperately. “Not so loud—just read it!”
The Ministry of Magic
announced late last night that there has been a mass breakout from
Azkaban.
Speaking to reporters in his private office, Cornelius Fudge,
Minister for Magic, confirmed that ten high-security prisoners escaped in the
early hours of yesterday evening and that he has already informed the Muggle
Prime Minister of the dangerous nature of these individuals.
“We find
ourselves, most unfortunately, in the same position we were two and a half years
ago when the murderer Sirius Black escaped,” said Fudge last night. “Nor do we
think the two breakouts are unrelated. An escape of this magnitude suggests
outside help, and we must remember that Black, as the first person ever to break
out of Azkaban, would be ideally placed to help others follow in his footsteps.
We think it likely that these individuals, who include Black's cousin, Bellatrix
Lestrange, have rallied around Black as their leader. We are, however, doing all
we can to round up the criminals, and we beg the magical community to remain
alert and cautious. On no account should any of these individuals be
approached.”
“There you are, Harry,” said Ron, looking awestruck. That's why
he was happy last night.”
“I don't believe this,” snarled Harry, “Fudge is
blaming the breakout on Sirius?”
“What other options does he have?” said
Hermione bitterly. “He can hardly say, "Sorry, everyone, Dumbledore warned me
this might happen, the Azkaban guards have joined Lord Voldemort"—stop
whimpering, Ron—"and now Voldemort's worst supporters have broken out, too." I
mean, he's spent a good six months telling everyone you and Dumbledore are
liars, hasn't he?”
Hermione ripped open the newspaper and began to read the
report inside while Harry looked around the Great Hall. He could not understand
why his fellow students were not looking scared or at least discussing the
terrible piece of news on the front page, but very few of them took the
newspaper every day like Hermione. There they all were, talking about homework
and Quidditch and who knew what other rubbish, when outside these walls ten more
Death Eaters had swollen Voldemort's ranks.
He glanced up at the staff table.
It was a different story there: Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were deep in
conversation, both looking extremely grave. Professor Sprout had the Prophet
propped against a bottle of ketchup and was reading the front page with such
concentration that she was not noticing the gentle drip of egg yolk falling into
her lap from her stationary spoon. Meanwhile, at the far end of the table,
Professor Umbridge was tucking into a bowl of porridge. For once her pouchy
toad's eyes were not sweeping the Great Hall looking for misbehaving students.
She scowled as she gulped down her food and every now and then she shot a
malevolent glance up the table to where Dumbledore and McGonagall were talking
so intently.
“Oh my—” said Hermione wonderingly, still staring at the
newspaper.
“What now?” said Harry quickly; he was feeling
jumpy.
“It's...horrible,” said Hermione, looking shaken. She folded back page
ten of the newspaper and handed it to Harry and Ron.
TRAGIC DEMISE OF
MINISTRY OF MAGIC WORKER St Mungo's Hospital promised a full inquiry last night
after Ministry of Magic worker Broderick Bode, 49, was discovered dead in his
bed, strangled by a pot plant. Healers called to the scene were unable to revive
Mr Bode, who had been injured in a workplace accident some weeks prior to his
death.
Healer Miriam Strout, who was in charge of Mr Bodes ward at the time
of the incident, has been suspended on full pay and was unavailable for comment
yesterday, but a spokeswizard for the hospital said in a statement:
“St
Mungo's deeply regrets the death of Mr Bode, whose health was improving steadily
prior to this tragic accident.
“We have strict guidelines on the decorations
permitted on our wards but it appears that Healer Strout, busy over the
Christmas period, overlooked the dangers of the plant on Mr Bode's bedside
table. As his speech and mobility improved, Healer Strout encouraged Mr Bode to
look after the plant himself, unaware that it was not an innocent Flitterbloom,
but a cutting of Devil's Snare which, when touched by the convalescent Mr Bode,
throttled him instantly.
“St Mungo's is as yet unable to account for the
presence of the plant on the ward and asks any witch or wizard with information
to come forward.”
“Bode...” said Ron. “Bode. It rings a bell...”
“We saw
him,” Hermione whispered. “In St Mungo's, remember? He was in the bed opposite
Lockhart's, just lying there, staring at the ceiling. And we saw the Devil's
Snare arrive. She—the Healer—said it was a Christmas present.”
Harry looked
back at the story. A feeling of horror was rising like bile in his
throat.
“How come we didn't recognise Devil’s Snare? We've seen it
before...we could've stopped this from happening.”
“Who expects Devil’s Snare
to turn up in a hospital disguised as a pot plant?” said Ron sharply. “It's not
our fault, whoever sent it to the bloke is to blame! They must be a real prat,
why didn't they check what they were buying?”
“Oh, come on, Ron!” said
Hermione shakily. “I don't think anyone could put Devil’s Snare in a pot and not
realise it tries to kill whoever touches it? This—this was murder...a clever
murder, as well...if the plant was sent anonymously, how's anyone ever going to
find out who did it?”
Harry was not thinking about Devil's Snare. He was
remembering taking the lift down to the ninth level of the Ministry on the day
of his hearing and the sallow-faced man who had got in on the Atrium
level.
“I met Bode,” he said slowly. “I saw him at the Ministry with your
dad.”
Rons mouth fell open.
“I've heard Dad talk about him at home! He was
an Unspeakable- he worked in the Department of Mysteries!”
They looked at
each other for a moment, then Hermione pulled the newspaper back towards her,
closed it, glared for a moment at the pictures of the ten escaped Death Eaters
on the front, then leapt to her feet.
“Where are you going?” said Ron,
startled.
“To send a letter,” said Hermione, swinging her bag on to her
shoulder. “It...well, I don't know whether...but it's worth trying...and I'm the
only one who can.”
“I hate it when she does that,” grumbled Ron, as he and
Harry got up from the table and made their own, slower way out of the Great
Hall. “Would it kill her to tell us what she's up to for once? It'd take her
about ten more seconds—hey, Hagrid!”
Hagrid was standing beside the doors
into the Entrance Hall, waiting for a crowd of Ravenclaws to pass. He was still
as heavily bruised as he had been on the day he had come back from his mission
to the giants and there was a new cut right across the bridge of his
nose.
“All righ', you two?” he said, trying to muster a smile but managing
only a kind of pained grimace.
“Are you OK, Hagrid?” asked Harry, following
him as he lumbered after the Ravenclaws.
“Fine, fine,” said Hagrid with a
feeble assumption of airiness; he waved a hand and narrowly missed concussing a
frightened-looking Professor Vector, who was passing. “Jus’ busy, yeh know,
usual stuff- lessons ter prepare—couple o’ salamanders got scale rot—an’ I'm on
probation,” he mumbled.
“You're on probation?” said Ron very loudly, so that
many of the passing students looked around curiously. “Sorry—I mean—you're on
probation?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” said Hagrid. "S'no more'n I expected, ter
tell yeh the truth. Yeh migh’ not've picked up on it, bu’ that inspection didn’
go too well, yeh know...anyway,” he sighed deeply. “Bes’ go an” rub a bit more
chilli powder on them salamanders or their tails'll be hangin’ off ‘em next. See
yeh, Harry...Ron...”
He trudged away, out of the front doors and down the
stone steps into the damp grounds. Harry watched him go, wondering how much more
bad news he could stand.
***
The fact that Hagrid was now on probation
became common knowledge within the school over the next few days, but to Harry's
indignation, hardly anybody appeared to be upset about it; indeed, some people,
Draco Malfoy prominent among them, seemed positively gleeful. As for the
freakish death of an obscure Department of Mysteries employee in St Mungo's,
Harry, Ron and Hermione seemed to be the only people who knew or cared. There
was only one topic of conversation in the corridors now: the ten escaped Death
Eaters, whose story had finally filtered through the school from those few
people who read the newspapers. Rumours were flying that some of the convicts
had been spotted in Hogsmeade, that they were supposed to be hiding out in the
Shrieking Shack and that they were going to break into Hogwarts, just as Sirius
Black had once done.
Those who came from wizarding families had grown up
hearing the names of these Death Eaters spoken with almost as much fear as
Voldemort’s; the crimes they had committed during the days of Voldemort's reign
of terror were legendary. There were relatives of their victims among the
Hogwarts students, who now found themselves the unwilling objects of a gruesome
sort of reflected fame as they walked the corridors: Susan Bones, whose uncle,
aunt and cousins had all died at the hands of one of the ten, said miserably
during Herbology that she now had a good idea what it felt like to be
Harry.
“And I don't know how you stand it—it's horrible,” she said bluntly,
dumping far too much dragon manure on her tray of Screechsnap seedlings, causing
them to wriggle and squeak in discomfort.
It was true that Harry was the
subject of much renewed muttering and pointing in the corridors these days, yet
he thought he detected a slight difference in the tone of the whisperers’
voices. They sounded curious rather than hostile now, and once or twice he was
sure he overheard snatches of conversation that suggested that the speakers were
not satisfied with the Prophet’s version of how and why ten Death Eaters had
managed to break out of the Azkaban fortress. In their confusion and fear, these
doubters now seemed to be turning to the only other explanation available to
them: the one that Harry and Dumbledore had been expounding since the previous
year.
It was not only the students’ mood that had changed. It was now quite
common to come across two or three teachers conversing in low, urgent whispers
in the corridors, breaking off their conversations the moment they saw students
approaching.
“They obviously can't talk freely in the staff room any more,”
said Hermione in a low voice, as she, Harry and Ron passed Professors
McGonagall, Flitwick and Sprout huddled together outside the Charms classroom
one day. “Not with Umbridge there.”
“Reckon they know anything new?” said
Ron, gazing back over his shoulder at the three teachers.
“If they do, we're
not going to hear about it, are we?” said Harry angrily. “Not after
Decree...what number are we on now?” For new notices had appeared on the house
noticeboards the morning after news of the Azkaban breakout:
Teachers are
hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related
to the subjects they are paid to teach.
The above is in accordance with
Educational Decree Number Twenty-six.
Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge, High
Inquisitor
This latest Decree had been the subject of a great number of jokes
among the students. Lee Jordan had pointed out to Umbridge that by the terms of
the new rule she was not allowed to tell Fred and George off for playing
Exploding Snap in the back of the class.
“Exploding Snap's got nothing to do
with Defence Against the Dark Arts, Professor! That's not information relating
to your subject!”
When Harry next saw Lee, the back of his hand was bleeding
rather badly. Harry recommended essence of Murtlap.
Harry had thought the
breakout from Azkaban might have humbled Umbridge a little, that she might have
been abashed at the catastrophe that had occurred right under the nose of her
beloved Fudge. It seemed, however, to have only intensified her furious desire
to bring every aspect of life at Hogwarts under her personal control. She seemed
determined at the very least to achieve a sacking before long, and the only
question was whether it would be Professor Trelawney or Hagrid who went
first.
Every single Divination and Care of Magical Creatures lesson was now
conducted in the presence of Umbridge and her clipboard. She lurked by the fire
in the heavily perfumed tower room, interrupting Professor Trelawney's
increasingly hysterical talks with difficult questions about ornithomancy and
heptomology, insisting that she predicted students’ answers before they gave
them and demanding that she demonstrate her skill at the crystal ball, the tea
leaves and the rune stones in turn. Harry thought Professor Trelawney might soon
crack under the strain. Several times he passed her in the corridors—in itself a
very unusual occurrence as she generally remained in her tower room—muttering
wildly to herself, wringing her hands and shooting terrified glances over her
shoulder, and all the while giving off a powerful smell of cooking sherry. If he
had not been so worried about Hagrid, he would have felt sorry for her—but if
one of them was to be ousted from their job, there could be only one choice for
Harry as to who should remain.
Unfortunately, Harry could not see that Hagrid
was putting up a better show than Trelawney. Though he seemed to be following
Hermione's advice and had shown them nothing more frightening than a Crup—a
creature indistinguishable from a Jack Russell terrier except for its forked
tail—since before Christmas, he too seemed to have lost his nerve. He was oddly
distracted and jumpy during lessons, losing the thread of what he was saying to
the class, answering questions wrongly, and all the time glancing anxiously at
Umbridge. He was also more distant with Harry, Ron and Hermione than he had ever
been before, and had expressly forbidden them to visit him after dark.
“If
she catches yeh, it'll be all of our necks on the line,” he told them flatly,
and with no desire to do anything that might jeopardise his job further they
abstained from walking down to his hut in the evenings.
It seemed to Harry
that Umbridge was steadily depriving him of everything that made his life at
Hogwarts worth living: visits to Hagrid's house, letters from Sirius, his
Firebolt and Quidditch. He took his revenge the only way he could—by redoubling
his efforts for the DA.
Harry was pleased to see that all of them, even
Zacharias Smith, had been spurred on to work harder than ever by the news that
ten more Death Eaters were now on the loose, but in nobody was this improvement
more pronounced than in Neville. The news of his parents’ attackers’ escape had
wrought a strange and even slightly alarming change in him. He had not once
mentioned his meeting with Harry, Ron and Hermione on the closed ward in St
Mungo's and, taking their lead from him, they had kept quiet about it too. Nor
had he said anything on the subject of Bellatrix and her fellow torturers’
escape. In fact, Neville barely spoke during the DA meetings any more, but
worked relentlessly on every new jinx and counter-curse Harry taught them, his
plump face screwed up in concentration, apparently indifferent to injuries or
accidents and working harder than anyone else in the room. He was improving so
fast it was quite unnerving and when Harry taught them the Shield Charm—a means
of deflecting minor jinxes so that they rebounded upon the attacker—only
Hermione mastered the charm faster than Neville.
Harry would have given a
great deal to be making as much progress at Occlumency as Neville was making
during the DA meetings. Harry's sessions with Snape, which had started badly
enough, were not improving. On the contrary Harry felt he was getting worse with
every lesson.
Before he had started studying Occlumency, his scar had
prickled occasionally, usually during the night, or else following one of those
strange flashes of Voldemort's thoughts or mood that he experienced every now
and then. Nowadays, however, his scar hardly ever stopped prickling, and he
often felt lurches of annoyance or cheerfulness that were unrelated to what was
happening to him at the time, which were always accompanied by a particularly
painful twinge from his scar. He had the horrible impression that he was slowly
turning into a kind of aerial that was tuned in to tiny fluctuations in
Voldemorts mood, and he was sure he could date this increased sensitivity firmly
from his first Occlumency lesson with Snape. What was more, he was now dreaming
about walking down the corridor towards the entrance to the Department of
Mysteries almost every night, dreams which always culminated in him standing
longingly in front of the plain black door.
“Maybe it's a bit like an
illness,” said Hermione, looking concerned when Harry confided in her and Ron.
“A fever or something. It has to get worse before it gets better.”
“The
lessons with Snape are making it worse,” said Harry flatly. “I'm getting sick of
my scar hurting and I'm getting bored with walking down that corridor every
night.” He rubbed his forehead angrily. “I just wish the door would open, I'm
sick of standing staring at it—”
“That's not funny,” said Hermione sharply.
“Dumbledore doesn't want you to have dreams about that corridor at all, or he
wouldn't have asked Snape to teach you Occlumency. You're just going to have to
work a bit harder in your lessons.”
“I am working!” said Harry nettled. “You
try it some time—Snape trying to get inside your head—it's not a bundle of
laughs, you know!”
“Maybe...” said Ron slowly.
“Maybe what?” said
Hermione, rather snappishly.
“Maybe it's not Harry's fault he can't close his
mind,” said Ron darkly.
“What do you mean?” said Hermione.
“Well, maybe
Snape isn't really trying to help Harry...”
Harry and Hermione stared at him.
Ron looked darkly and meaningfully from one to the other.
“Maybe,” he said
again, in a lower voice, “he's actually trying to open Harry's mind a bit
wider...make it easier for You-Know—”
“Shut up, Ron,” said Hermione angrily.
“How many times have you suspected Snape, and when have you ever been right?
Dumbledore trusts him, he works for the Order, that ought to be enough.”
“He
used to be a Death Eater,” said Ron stubbornly. “And we've never seen proof that
he really swapped sides.”
“Dumbledore trusts him,” Hermione repeated. “And if
we can't trust Dumbledore, we can't trust anyone.”
***
With so much to
worry about and so much to do—startling amounts of homework that frequently kept
the fifth-years working until past midnight, secret DA sessions and regular
classes with Snape -January seemed to be passing alarmingly fast. Before Harry
knew it, February had arrived, bringing with it wetter and warmer weather and
the prospect of the second Hogsmeade visit of the year. Harry had had very
little time to spare for conversations with Cho since they had agreed to visit
the village together, but suddenly found himself facing a Valentine's Day spent
entirely in her company.
On the morning of the fourteenth he dressed
particularly carefully. He and Ron arrived at breakfast just in time for the
arrival of the post owls. Hedwig was not there—not that Harry had expected
her—but Hermione was tugging a letter from the beak of an unfamiliar brown owl
as they sat down.
“And about time! If it hadn't come today...” she said,
eagerly tearing open the envelope and pulling out a small piece of parchment.
Her eyes sped from left to right as she read through the message and a grimly
pleased expression spread across her face.
“Listen, Harry,” she said, looking
up at him, “this is really important. Do you think you could meet me in the
Three Broomsticks around midday?”
“Well...I dunno,” said Harry uncertainly.
“Cho might be expecting me to spend the whole day with her. We never said what
we were going to do.”
“Well, bring her along if you must,” said Hermione
urgently. “But will you come?”
“Well...all right, but why?”
“I haven't got
time to tell you now, I've got to answer this quickly.”
And she hurried out
of the Great Hall, the letter clutched in one hand and a piece of toast in the
other.
“Are you coming?” Harry asked Ron, but he shook his head, looking
glum.
“I can't come into Hogsmeade at all; Angelina wants a full day's
training. Like it's going to help; we're the worst team I've ever seen. You
should see Sloper and Kirke, they're pathetic, even worse than I am.” He heaved
a great sigh. “I dunno why Angelina won't just let me resign.”
“It's because
you're good when you're on form, that's why,” said Harry irritably.
He found
it very hard to be sympathetic to Ron's plight, when he himself would have given
almost anything to be playing in the forthcoming match against Hufflepuff. Ron
seemed to have noticed Harry’s tone, because he did not mention Quidditch again
during breakfast, and there was a slight frostiness in the way they said goodbye
to each other shortly afterwards. Ron departed for the Quidditch pitch and
Harry, after attempting to flatten his hair while staring at his reflection in
the back of a teaspoon, proceeded alone to the Entrance Hall to meet Cho,
feeling very apprehensive and wondering what on earth they were going to talk
about.
She was waiting for him a little to the side of the oak front doors,
looking very pretty with her hair tied back in a long pony-tail. Harry's feet
seemed to be too big for his body as he walked towards her and he was suddenly
horribly aware of his arms and how stupid they must look swinging at his
sides.
“Hi,” said Cho slightly breathlessly.
“Hi,” said Harry.
They
stared at each other for a moment, then Harry said, “Well—er—shall we go,
then?”
“Oh—yes...”
They joined the queue of people being signed out by
Filch, occasionally catching each other's eye and grinning shiftily, but not
talking to each other. Harry was relieved when they reached the fresh air,
finding it easier to walk along in silence than just stand about looking
awkward. It was a fresh, breezy sort of a day and as they passed the Quidditch
stadium Harry glimpsed Ron and Ginny skimming along over the stands and felt a
horrible pang that he was not up there with them.
“You really miss it, don't
you?” said Cho.
He looked round and saw her watching him.
“Yeah,” sighed
Harry. “I do.”
“Remember the first time we played against each other, in the
third year?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” said Harry, grinning. “You kept blocking
me.”
“And Wood told you not to be a gentleman and knock me off my broom if
you had to,” said Cho, smiling reminiscently. “I heard he got taken on by Pride
of Portree, is that right?”
“Nah, it was Puddlemere United; I saw him at the
World Cup last year.”
“Oh, I saw you there, too, remember? We were on the
same campsite. It was really good, wasn't it?”
The subject of the Quidditch
World Cup carried them all the way down the drive and out through the gates.
Harry could hardly believe how easy it was to talk to her—no more difficult, in
fact, than talking to Ron and Hermione—and he was just starting to feel
confident and cheerful when a large gang of Slytherin girls passed them,
including Pansy Parkinson.
“Potter and Chang!” screeched Pansy, to a chorus
of snide giggles. “Urgh, Chang, I don't think much of your taste...at least
Diggory was good-looking!”
The girls sped up, talking and shrieking in a
pointed fashion with many exaggerated glances back at Harry and Cho, leaving an
embarrassed silence in their wake. Harry could think of nothing else to say
about Quidditch, and Cho, slightly flushed, was watching her
feet.
“So...where d'you want to go?” Harry asked as they entered Hogsmeade.
The High Street was full of students ambling up and down, peering into the shop
windows and messing about together on the pavements.
“Oh...I don't mind,”
said Cho, shrugging. “Urn...shall we just have a look in the shops or
something?”
They wandered towards Dervish and Banges. A large poster had been
stuck up in the window and a few Hogsmeaders were looking at it. They moved
aside when Harry and Cho approached and Harry found himself staring once more at
the pictures of the ten escaped Death Eaters. The poster, “By Order of the
Ministry of Magic”, offered a thousand-Galleon reward to any witch or wizard
with information leading to the recapture of any of the convicts
pictured.
“It's funny, isn't it,” said Cho in a low voice, gazing up at the
pictures of the Death Eaters, “remember when that Sirius Black escaped, and
there were Dementors all over Hogsmeade looking for him? And now ten Death
Eaters are on the loose and there are no Dementors anywhere...”
“Yeah,” said
Harry, tearing his eyes away from Bellatrix Lestrange's face to glance up and
down the High Street. “Yeah, that is weird.”
He wasn't sorry that there were
no Dementors nearby, but now he came to think of it, their absence was highly
significant. They had not only let the Death Eaters escape, they weren't
bothering to look for them...it looked as though they really were outside
Ministry control now.
The ten escaped Death Eaters were staring out of every
shop window he and Cho passed. It started to rain as they passed Scrivenshaft's;
cold, heavy drops of water kept hitting Harry's face and the back of his
neck.
“Urn...d'you want to get a coffee?” said Cho tentatively, as the rain
began to fall more heavily.
“Yeah, all right,” said Harry, looking around.
“Where?”
“Oh, there's a really nice place just up here; haven't you ever been
to Madam Puddifoot's?” she said brightly, leading him up a side road and into a
small teashop that Harry had never noticed before. It was a cramped, steamy
little place where everything seemed to have been decorated with frills or bows.
Harry was reminded unpleasantly of Umbridge's office.
“Cute, isn't it?” said
Cho happily.
“Er...yeah,” said Harry untruthfully.
“Look, she's decorated
it for Valentine's Day!” said Cho, indicating a number of golden cherubs that
were hovering over each of the small, circular tables, occasionally throwing
pink confetti over the occupants.
“Aaah...”
They sat down at the last
remaining table, which was over by the steamy window. Roger Davies, the
Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain, was sitting about a foot and a half away with a
pretty blonde girl. They were holding hands. The sight made Harry feel
uncomfortable, particularly when, looking around the teashop, he saw that it was
full of nothing but couples, all of them holding hands. Perhaps Cho would expect
him to hold her hand.
“What can I get you, m'dears?” said Madam Puddifoot, a
very stout woman with a shiny black bun, squeezing between their table and Roger
Davies's with great difficulty.
“Two coffees, please,” said Cho.
In the
time it took for their coffees to arrive, Roger Davies and his girlfriend had
started kissing over their sugar bowl. Harry wished they wouldn't; he felt that
Davies was setting a standard with which Cho would soon expect him to compete.
He felt his face growing hot and tried staring out of the window, but it was so
steamed up he couldn't see the street outside. To postpone the moment when he
would have to look at Cho, he stared up at the ceiling as though examining the
paintwork and received a handful of confetti in the face from their hovering
cherub.
After a few more painful minutes, Cho mentioned Umbridge. Harry
seized on the subject with relief and they passed a few happy moments abusing
her, but the subject had already been so thoroughly canvassed during DA meetings
it did not last very long. Silence fell again. Harry was very conscious of the
slurping noises coming from the table next door and cast wildly around for
something else to say.
“Er...listen, d'you want to come with me to the Three
Broomsticks at lunchtime? I'm meeting Hermione Granger there.”
Cho raised her
eyebrows.
“You're meeting Hermione Granger? Today?”
“Yeah. Well, she asked
me to, so I thought I would. D'you want to come with me? She said it wouldn't
matter if you did.”
“Oh...well...that was nice of her.”
But Cho did not
sound as though she thought it was nice at all. On the contrary, her tone was
cold and all of a sudden she looked rather forbidding.
A few more minutes
passed in total silence, Harry drinking his coffee so fast that he would soon
need a fresh cup. Beside them, Roger Davies and his girlfriend seemed glued
together at the lips.
Cho's hand was lying on the table beside her coffee and
Harry was feeling a mounting pressure to take hold of it. Just do it, he told
himself, as a fount of mingled panic and excitement surged up inside his chest,
just reach out and grab it. Amazing, how much more difficult it was to extend
his arm twelve inches and touch her hand than it was to snatch a speeding Snitch
from midair...
But just as he moved his hand forwards, Cho took hers off the
table. She was now watching Roger Davies kissing his girlfriend with a mildly
interested expression.
“He asked me out, you know,” she said in a quiet
voice. “A couple of weeks ago. Roger. I turned him down, though.”
Harry, who
had grabbed the sugar bowl to excuse his sudden lunging movement across the
table, could not think why she was telling him this. If she wished she were
sitting at the next table being heartily kissed by Roger Davies, why had she
agreed to come out with him?
He said nothing. Their cherub threw another
handful of confetti over them; some of it landed in the last cold dregs of
coffee Harry had been about to drink.
“I came in here with Cedric last year,”
said Cho.
In the second or so it took for him to take in what she had said,
Harry's insides had become glacial. He could not believe she wanted to talk
about Cedric now, while kissing couples surrounded them and a cherub floated
over their heads.
Cho's voice was rather higher when she spoke
again.
“I've been meaning to ask you for ages...did Cedric—did
he—in—in—mention me at all before he died?”
“This was the very last subject
on earth Harry wanted to discuss, and least of all with Cho.
“Well—no—” he
said quietly. There—there wasn't time for him to say anything.
Erm...so...d'you...d'you get to see a lot of Quidditch in the holidays? You
support the Tornados, right?”
His voice sounded falsely bright and cheery. To
his horror, he saw that her eyes were swimming with tears again, just as they
had been after the last DA meeting before Christmas.
“Look,” he said
desperately, leaning in so that nobody else could overhear, “let's not talk
about Cedric right now...let's talk about something else”
But this,
apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say.
“I thought,” she said, tears
spattering down on to the table, “I thought you'd u—u—understand! I need to talk
about it! Surely you n—need to talk about it't—too! I mean, you saw it happen,
d—didn't you?”
Everything was going nightmarishly wrong; Roger Davies's
girlfriend had even unglued herself to look round at Cho crying.
“Well—I have
talked about it,” Harry said in a whisper, “to Ron and Hermione, but—”
“Oh,
you'll talk to Hermione Granger!” she said shrilly, her face now shining with
tears. Several more kissing couples broke apart to stare. “But you won't talk to
me! P—perhaps it would be best if we just...just p—paid and you went and met up
with Hermione G—Granger, like you obviously want to!”
Harry stared at her,
utterly bewildered, as she seized a frilly napkin and dabbed at her shining face
with it.
“Cho?” he said weakly, wishing Roger would seize his girlfriend and
start kissing her again to stop her goggling at him and Cho.
“Go on, leave!”
she said, now crying into the napkin. “I don't know why you asked me out in the
first place if you're going to make arrangements to meet other girls right after
me...how many are you meeting after Hermione?”
“It's not like that!” said
Harry, and he was so relieved at finally understanding what she was annoyed
about that he laughed, which he realised a split second too late was also a
mistake.
Cho sprang to her feet. The whole tearoom was quiet and everybody
was watching them now.
“Til see you around, Harry” she said dramatically, and
hiccoughing slightly she dashed to the door, wrenched it open and hurried off
into the pouring rain.
“Cho!” Harry called after her, but the door had
already swung shut behind her with a tuneful tinkle.
There was total silence
within the teashop. Every eye was on Harry. He threw a Galleon down on to the
table, shook pink confetti out of his hair, and followed Cho out of the
door.
It was raining hard now and she was nowhere to be seen. He simply did
not understand what had happened; half an hour ago they had been getting along
fine.
“Women!” he muttered angrily, sloshing down the rain-washed street with
his hands in his pockets. “What did she want to talk about Cedric for, anyway?
Why does she always want to drag up a subject that makes her act like a human
hosepipe?”
He turned right and broke into a splashy run, and within minutes
he was turning into the doorway of the Three Broomsticks. He knew he was too
early to meet Hermione, but he thought it likely there would be someone in here
with whom he could spend the intervening time. He shook his wet hair out of his
eyes and looked around. Hagrid was sitting alone in a corner, looking
morose.
“Hi, Hagrid!” he said, when he had squeezed through the crammed
tables and pulled up a chair beside him.
Hagrid jumped and looked down at
Harry as though he barely recognised him. Harry saw that he had two fresh cuts
on his face and several new bruises.
“Oh, it's yeh, Harry,” said Hagrid. “Yeh
all right”
“Yeah, I'm fine,” lied Harry; but, next to this battered and
mournful-looking Hagrid, he felt he didn't really have much to complain about.
“Er—are you OK?”
“Me?” said Hagrid. “Oh yeah, I'm grand, Harry, grand.”
He
gazed into the depths of his pewter tankard, which was the size of a large
bucket, and sighed. Harry didn't know what to say to him. They sat side by side
in silence for a moment. Then Hagrid said abruptly, “In the same boat, yeh an’
me, aren’ we, ‘Arry?”
“Er—” said Harry.
“Yeah...I've said it before...both
outsiders, like,” said Hagrid, nodding wisely. “An’ both orphans. Yeah...both
orphans.”
He took a great swig from his tankard.
“Makes a diff'rence,
havin’ a decent family,” he said. “Me dad was decent. An’ your mum an’ dad were
decent. If they'd lived, life woulda bin diff'rent, eh?”
“Yeah...I's'pose,”
said Harry cautiously. Hagrid seemed to be in a very strange mood.
“Family,”
said Hagrid gloomily. “Whatever yeh say, blood's important...”
And he wiped a
trickle of it out of his eye.
“Hagrid,” said Harry, unable to stop himself,
“where are you getting all these injuries?”
“Eh?” said Hagrid, looking
startled. “Wha’ injuries?”
“All those!” said Harry, pointing at Hagrid's
face.
“Oh...tha's jus’ normal bumps an’ bruises, Harry,” said Hagrid
dismissively, “I got a rough job.”
He drained his tankard, set it back on the
table and got to his feet.
“Til be seein’ yeh, Harry...take care now.”
And
he lumbered out of the pub looking wretched, and disappeared into the torrential
rain. Harry watched him go, feeling miserable. Hagrid was unhappy and he was
hiding something, but he seemed determined not to accept help. What was going
on? But before Harry could think about it any further, he heard a voice calling
his name.
“Harry! Harry, over here!”
Hermione was waving at him from the
other side of the room. He got up and made his way towards her through the
crowded pub. He was still a few tables away when he realised that Hermione was
not alone. She was sitting at a table with the unlikeliest pair of drinking
mates he could ever have imagined: Luna Lovegood and none other than Rita
Skeeter, ex-journalist on the Daily Prophet and one of Hermione's least
favourite people in the world.
“You're early!” said Hermione, moving along to
give him room to sit down. “I thought you were with Cho, I wasn't expecting you
for another hour at least!”
“Cho?” said Rita at once, twisting round in her
seat to stare avidly at Harry. “A girl?”
She snatched up her crocodile-skin
handbag and groped within it.
“It's none of your business if Harry's been
with a hundred girls,” Hermione told Rita coolly. “So you can put that away
right now.”
Rita had been on the point of withdrawing an acid-green quill
from her bag. Looking as though she had been forced to swallow Stinksap, she
snapped her bag shut again.
“What are you up to?” Harry asked, sitting down
and staring from Rita to Luna to Hermione.
“Little Miss Perfect was just
about to tell me when you arrived,” said Rita, taking a large slurp of her
drink. “I suppose I'm allowed to talk to him, am I?” she shot at
Hermione.
“Yes, I suppose you are,” said Hermione coldly.
Unemployment did
not suit Rita. The hair that had once been set in elaborate curls now hung lank
and unkempt around her face. The scarlet paint on her two-inch talons was
chipped and there were a couple of false jewels missing from her winged glasses.
She took another great gulp of her drink and said out of the corner of her
mouth, “Pretty girl, is she, Harry?”
“One more word about Harry's love life
and the deal's off and that's a promise,” said Hermione irritably.
“What
deal?” said Rita, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “You haven't
mentioned a deal yet, Miss Prissy, you just told me to turn up. Oh, one of these
days..." She took a deep shuddering breath.
“Yes, yes, one of these days
you'll write more horrible stories about Harry and me,” said Hermione
indifferently. “Find someone who cares, why don't you?”
“They've run plenty
of horrible stories about Harry this year without my help,” said Rita, shooting
a sideways look at him over the top of her glass and adding in a rough whisper,
“How has that made you feel, Harry? Betrayed? Distraught? Misunderstood?”
“He
feels angry, of course,” said Hermione in a hard, clear voice. “Because he's
told the Minister for Magic the truth and the Minister's too much of an idiot to
believe him.”
“So you actually stick to it, do you, that He Who Must Not Be
Named is back?” said Rita, lowering her glass and subjecting Harry to a piercing
stare while her finger strayed longingly to the clasp of the crocodile bag. “You
stand by all this garbage Dumbledore's been telling everybody about You-Know-Who
returning and you being the sole witness?”
“I wasn't the sole witness,”
snarled Harry. “There were a dozen-odd Death Eaters there as well. Want their
names?”
“I'd love them,” breathed Rita, now fumbling in her bag once more and
gazing at him as though he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. “A
great bold headline: "Potter Accuses..." A sub-heading, "Harry Potter Names
Death Eaters Still Among Us". And then, beneath a nice big photograph of you,
"Disturbed teenage survivor of You-Know-Who's attack, Harry Potter, 15, caused
outrage yesterday by accusing respectable and prominent members oj the wizarding
community oj being Death Eaters ..."”
The Quick-Quotes Quill was actually in
her hand and halfway to her mouth when the rapturous expression on her face
died.
“But of course,” she said, lowering the quill and looking daggers at
Hermione, “Little Miss Perfect wouldn't want that story out there, would
she?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Hermione sweetly, “that's exactly what
Little Miss Perfect does want.”
Rita stared at her. So did Harry. Luna, on
the other hand, sang “Weasley is our King” dreamily under her breath and stirred
her drink with a cocktail onion on a stick.
“You want me to report what he
says about He Who Must Not Be Named?” Rita asked Hermione in a hushed
voice.
“Yes, I do,” said Hermione. “The true story. All the facts. Exactly as
Harry reports them. He'll give you all the details, he'll tell you the names of
the undiscovered Death Eaters he saw there, he'll tell you what Voldemort looks
like now—oh, get a grip on yourself,” she added contemptuously, throwing a
napkin across the table, for, at the sound of Voldemort's name, Rita had jumped
so badly she had slopped half her glass of Firewhisky down herself.
Rita
blotted the front of her grubby raincoat, still staring at Hermione. Then she
said baldly, “The Prophet wouldn't print it. In case you haven't noticed, nobody
believes his cock-and-bull story. Everyone thinks he's delusional. Now, if you
let me write the story from that angle—”
“We don't need another story about
how Harry's lost his marbles!” said Hermione angrily. “We've had plenty of those
already, thank you! I want him given the opportunity to tell the
truth!”
“There's no market for a story like that,” said Rita coldly.
“You
mean the Prophet won't print it because Fudge won't let them,” said Hermione
irritably.
Rita gave Hermione a long, hard look. Then, leaning forwards
across the table towards her, she said in a businesslike tone, “All right, Fudge
is leaning on the Prophet, but it comes to the same thing. They won't print a
story that shows Harry in a good light. Nobody wants to read it. It's against
the public mood. This last Azkaban breakout has got people quite worried enough.
People just don't want to believe You-Know-Whos back.”
“So the Daily Prophet
exists to tell people what they want to hear, does it?” said Hermione
scathingly.
Rita sat up straight again, her eyebrows raised, and drained her
glass of Firewhisky.
“The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl,” she
said coldly.
“My dad thinks it's an awful paper,” said Luna, chipping into
the conversation unexpectedly. Sucking on her cocktail onion, she gazed at Rita
with her enormous, protuberant, slightly mad eyes. “He publishes important
stories he thinks the public needs to know. He doesn't care about making
money.”
Rita looked disparagingly at Luna.
“I'm guessing your father runs
some stupid little village newsletter?” she said. “Probably, Twenty-Jive Ways to
Mingle With Muggles and the dates of the next Bring and Fly Sale?”
“No,” said
Luna, dipping her onion back into her Gillywater, “he's the editor of The
Quibbler.”
Rita snorted so loudly that people at a nearby table looked round
in alarm.
“"Important stories he thinks the public needs to know", eh?” she
said witheringly. “I could manure my garden with the contents of that
rag.”
“Well, this is your chance to raise the tone of it a bit, isn't it?”
said Hermione pleasantly. “Luna says her father's quite happy to take Harry's
interview. That's who'll be publishing it.”
Rita stared at them both for a
moment, then let out a great whoop of laughter.
“The Quibbler!” she said,
cackling. “You think people will take him seriously if he's published in The
Quibbler”
“Some people won't,” said Hermione in a level voice. “But the Daily
Prophet's version of the Azkaban breakout had some gaping holes in it. I think a
lot of people will be wondering whether there isn't a better explanation of what
happened, and if there's an alternative story available, even if it is published
in a—” she glanced sideways at Luna, “in a—well, an unusual magazine—I think
they might be rather keen to read it.”
Rita didn't say anything for a while,
but eyed Hermione shrewdly, her head a little to one side.
“All right, let's
say for a moment I'll do it,” she said abruptly. “What kind of fee am I going to
get?”
“I don't think Daddy exactly pays people to write for the magazine,”
said Luna dreamily. “They do it because it's an honour and, of course, to see
their names in print.”
Rita Skeeter looked as though the taste of Stinksap
was strong in her mouth again as she rounded on Hermione.
“I'm supposed to do
this for free?”
“Well, yes,” said Hermione calmly, taking a sip of her drink.
“Otherwise, as you very well know, I will inform the authorities that you are an
unregistered Animagus. Of course, the Prophet might give you rather a lot for an
insider's account of life in Azkaban.”
Rita looked as though she would have
liked nothing better than to seize the paper umbrella sticking out of Hermione's
drink and thrust it up her nose.
“I don't suppose I've got any choice, have
I?” said Rita, her voice shaking slightly. She opened her crocodile bag once
more, withdrew a piece of parchment, and raised her Quick-Quotes
Quill.
“Daddy will be pleased,” said Luna brightly. A muscle twitched in
Rita's jaw.
“OK, Harry?” said Hermione, turning to him. “Ready to tell the
public the truth?”
“I suppose,” said Harry, watching Rita balancing the
Quick-Quotes Quill at the ready on the parchment between them.
“Tire away,
then, Rita,” said Hermione serenely, fishing a cherry out from the bottom of her
glass.