Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix By J.K. Rowling Part 5

“Who’s that?” she said sharply, pointing towards the middle of the staff table.

Harry’s eyes followed hers. They lit first upon Professor Dumbledore, sitting in his high-backed

golden chair at the center of the long staff table, wearing deep-purple robes scattered with silvery

stars and a matching hat. Dumbledore’s head was inclined towards the woman sitting next to

him, who was talking into his ear. She looked, Harry thought, like somebody’s maiden aunt:

squat, with short, curly, mouse-brown hair in which she had placed a horrible pink Alice band

that matched the fluffy pink cardigan she wore over her robes. Then she turned her face slightly

to take a sip from her goblet and he saw, with a shock of recognition, a pallid, toadlike face and a

pair of prominent, pouchy eyes.

“It’s that Umbridge woman!”

“Who?” said Hermione.

“She was at my hearing, she works for Fudge!”

“Nice cardigan,” said Ron, smirking.

“She works for Fudge!” Hermione repeated, frowning. “What on earth’s she doing here, then?”

“Dunno…”

Hermione scanned the staff table, her eyes narrowed.

“No,” she muttered, “no, surely not…”

Harry did not understand what she was talking about but did not ask; his attention had been

caught by Professor Grubbly-Plank who had just appeared behind the staff table; she worked her

way along to the very end and took the seat that ought to have been Hagrids. That meant the

first-years must have crossed the lake and reached the castle, and sure enough, a few seconds

later, the doors from the Entrance Hall opened. A long line of scared-looking first-years entered,

led by Professor McGonagall, who was carrying a stool on which sat an ancient wizard’s hat,

heavily patched and darned with a wide rip near the frayed brim.

The buzz of talk in the Great Hall faded away. The first-years lined up in front of the staff table

facing the rest of the students, and Professor McGonagall placed the stool carefully in front of

them, then stood back.

The first-years’ faces glowed palely in the candlelight. A small boy right in the middle of the row

looked as though he was trembling. Harry recalled, fleetingly, how terrified he had felt when he

had stood there, waiting for the unknown test that would determine to which house he belonged.

The whole school waited with bated breath. Then the rip near the hat’s brim opened wide like a

mouth and the Sorting Hat burst into song:

In times of old when I was new,

And Hogwarts barely started,

The founders of our noble school,

Thought never to be parted,

United by a common goal,

They had the selfsame yearning,

To make the world’s best magic school,

And pass along their learning.

“Together we will build and teach!”

The four good friends decided,

And never did they dream,

That they might some day be divided,

For were there such friends anywhere,

As Slytherin and Gryffindor?

Unless it was the second pair

Of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw?

So how could it have gone so wrong?

How could such friendships fail?

Why, I was there and so can tell,

The whole sad, sorry tale.

Said Slytherin, “We’ll teach just those whose

Ancestry is purest.”

Said Ravenclaw, “We’ll teach those whose

Intelligence is surest.”

Said Gryffindor, “We’ll teach all those

With brave deeds to their name.”

Said Hufflepuff, “I’ll teach the lot,

And treat them just the same.”

These differences caused little strife,

When first they came to light,

For each of the four founders had

A house in which they might

Take only those they wanted,

So, for instance, Slytherin

Took only pure-blood wizards

Of great cunning, just like him,

And only those of sharpest mind

Were taught by Ravenclaw

While the bravest and the boldest

Went to daring Gryffindor.

Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest,

And taught them all she knew,

Thus the houses and their founders

Retained friendships firm and true.

So Hogwarts worked in harmony

For several happy years,

But then discord crept among us

Feeding on our faults and fears.

The houses that, like pillars four,

Had once held up our school,

Now turned upon each other and,

Divided, sought to rule.

And for a while it seemed the school

Must meet an early end,

What with dueling and with fighting

And the clash of friend on friend

And at last there came a morning

When old Slytherin departed

And though the fighting then died out

He left us quite downhearted.

And never since the founders four

Were whittled down to three

Have the houses been united

As they once were meant to be.

And now the Sorting Hat is here

And you all know the score:

I sort you into houses

Because that is what I’m for,

But this year I’ll go further,

Listen closely to my song:

Though condemned I am to split you

Still I worry that it’s wrong,

Though I must fulfill my duty

And must quarter every year

Still I wonder whether Sorting

May not bring the end I fear.

Oh, know the perils, read the signs,

The warning history shows,

For our Hogwarts is in danger

From external, deadly foes

And we must unite inside her

Or we’ll crumble from within

I have told you, I have warned you…

Let the Sorting now begin.

The Hat became motionless once more; applause broke out, though it was punctured, for the first

time in Harry’s memory, with muttering and whispers. All across the Great Hall students were

exchanging remarks with their neighbors, and Harry, clapping along with everyone else, knew

exactly what they were talking about.

“Branched out a bit this year, hasn’t it?” said Ron, his eyebrows raised.

“Too right it has,” said Harry.

The Sorting Hat usually confined itself to describing the different qualities looked for by each of

the four Hogwarts houses and its own role in Sorting them. Harry could not remember it ever

trying to give the school advice before.

“I wonder if it’s ever given warnings before?” said Hermione, sounding slightly anxious.

“Yes, indeed,” said Nearly Headless Nick knowledgeably, leaning across Neville towards her

(Neville winced; it was very uncomfortable to have a ghost lean through you). “The Hat feels

itself honor-bound to give the school due warning whenever it feels –”

But Professor McGonagall, who was waiting to read out the list of first-years’ names, was giving

the whispering students the sort of look that scorches. Nearly Headless Nick placed a see-through finger to his lips and sat primly upright again as the muttering came to an abrupt end.

With a last frowning look that swept the four house tables, Professor McGonagall lowered her

eyes to her long piece of parchment and called out the first name.

“Abercrombie, Euan.”

The terrified-looking boy Harry had noticed earlier stumbled forwards and put the Hat on his

head; it was only prevented from falling right down to his shoulders by his very prominent ears.

The Hat considered for a moment, then the rip near the brim opened again and shouted:

“Gryffindor!”

Harry clapped loudly with the rest of Gryffindor house as Euan Abercrombie staggered to their

table and sat down, looking as though he would like very much to sink through the floor and

never be looked at again.

Slowly, the long line of first-years thinned. In the pauses between the names and the Sorting

Hat’s decisions, Harry could hear Ron’s stomach rumbling loudly. Finally, “Zeller, Rose” was

Sorted into Hufflepuff, and Professor McGonagall picked up the Hat and stool and marched

them away as Professor Dumbledore rose to his feet.

Whatever his recent bitter feelings had been towards his Headmaster, Harry was somehow

soothed to see Dumbledore standing before them all. Between the absence of Hagrid and the

presence of those dragonish horses, he had felt that his return to Hogwarts, so long anticipated,

was full of unexpected surprises, like jarring notes in a familiar song. But this, at least, was how

it was supposed to be: their Headmaster rising to greet them all before the start-of-term feast.

“To our newcomers,” said Dumbledore in a ringing voice, his arms stretched wide and a beaming smile on his lips, “welcome! To our old hands - welcome back! There is a time for speechmaking, but this is not it. Tuck in!”

There was an appreciative laugh and an outbreak of applause as Dumbledore sat down neatly and

threw his long beard over his shoulder so as to keep it out of the way of his plate - for food had

appeared out of nowhere, so that the five long tables were groaning under joints and pies and

dishes of vegetables, bread and sauces and flagons of pumpkin juice.

“Excellent,” said Ron, with a kind of groan of longing, and he seized the nearest plate of chops

and began piling them on to his plate, watched wistfully by Nearly Headless Nick.

“What were you saying before the Sorting?” Hermione asked the ghost. “About the Hat giving

warnings?”

“Oh, yes,” said Nick, who seemed glad of a reason to turn away from Ron, who was now eating

roast potatoes with almost indecent enthusiasm. “Yes, I have heard the Hat give several warnings

before, always at times when it detects periods of great danger for the school. And always, of

course, its advice is the same: stand together, be strong from within.”

“Ow kunnit nofe skusin danger ifzat?” said Ron.

His mouth was so full Harry thought it was quite an achievement for him to make any noise at

all.

“I beg your pardon?” said Nearly Headless Nick politely, while Hermione looked revolted. Ron

gave an enormous swallow and said, “How can it know if the school’s in danger if it’s a Hat?”

“I have no idea,” said Nearly Headless Nick. “Of course, it lives in Dumbledore’s office, so I

daresay it picks things up there.”

“And it wants all the houses to be friends?” said Harry, looking over at the Slytherin table, where

Draco Malfoy was holding court. “Fat chance.”

“Well, now, you shouldn’t take that attitude,” said Nick reprovingly. “Peaceful cooperation,

that’s the key. We ghosts, though we belong to separate houses, maintain links of friendship. In

spite of the competitiveness between Gryffindor and Slytherin, I would never dream of seeking

an argument with the Bloody Baron.”

“Only because you’re terrified of him,” said Ron.

Nearly Headless Nick looked highly affronted.

“Terrified? I hope I, Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, have never been guilty of cowardice in

my life! The noble blood that runs in my veins -”

“What blood?” asked Ron. “Surely you haven’t still got -?”

“Its a figure of speech!” said Nearly Headless Nick, now so annoyed his head was trembling

ominously on his partially severed neck. “I assume I am still allowed to enjoy the use of

whichever words I like, even if the pleasures of eating and drinking are denied me! But I am

quite used to students poking fun at my death, I assure you!”

“Nick, he wasn’t really laughing at you!” said Hermione, throwing a furious look at Ron.

Unfortunately, Ron’s mouth was packed to exploding point again and all he could manage was

“Node iddum eentup sechew,” which Nick did not seem to think constituted an adequate apology.

Rising into the air, he straightened his feathered hat and swept away from them to the other end

of the table, coming to rest between the Creevey brothers, Colin and Dennis.

“Well done, Ron,” snapped Hermione.

“What?” said Ron indignantly, having managed, finally, to swallow his food. “I’m not allowed to

ask a simple question?”

“Oh, forget it,” said Hermione irritably, and the pair of them spent the rest of the meal in huffy

silence.

Harry was too used to their bickering to bother trying to reconcile them; he felt it was a better

use of his time to eat his way steadily through his steak and kidney pie, then a large plateful of

his favorite treacle tart.

When all the students had finished eating and the noise level in the Hall was starting to creep

upwards again, Dumbledore got to his feet once more. Talking ceased immediately as all turned

to lace the Headmaster. Harry was feeling pleasantly drowsy now. His four-poster bed was

waiting somewhere above, wonderfully warm and soft…

“Well, now that we are all digesting another magnificent feast, I beg a few moments of your

attention for the usual start-of-term notices,” said Dumbledore. “First-years ought to know that

the Forest in the grounds is out-of-bounds to students - and a few of our older students ought to

know by now, too.” (Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged smirks.)

“Mr. Filch, the caretaker, has asked me, for what he tells me is the four-hundred-and-sixty second time, to remind you all that magic is not permitted in corridors between classes, nor are a

number of other things, all of which can be checked on the extensive list now fastened to Mr.

Filch’s office door.

“We have had two changes in staffing this year. We are very pleased to welcome back Professor

Grubbly-Plank, who will be taking Care of Magical Creatures lessons; we are also delighted to

introduce Professor Umbridge, our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.”

There was a round of polite but fairly unenthusiastic applause, during which Harry, Ron and

Hermione exchanged slightly panicked looks; Dumbledore had not said for how long Grubbly-

Plank would be teaching.

Dumbledore continued, “Tryouts for the house Quidditch teams will take place on the -”

He broke off, looking enquiringly at Professor Umbridge. As she was not much taller standing

than sitting, there was a moment when nobody understood why Dumbledore had stopped talking,

but then Professor Umbridge cleared her throat, “Hem, hem,” and it became clear that she had got to her feet and was intending to make a speech.

Dumbledore only looked taken aback for a moment, then he sat down smartly and looked alertly

at Professor Umbridge as though he desired nothing better than to listen to her talk. Other

members of staff were not as adept at hiding their surprise. Professor Sprout’s eyebrows had

disappeared into her flyaway hair and Professor McGonagall’s mouth was as thin as Harry had

ever seen it. No new teacher had ever interrupted Dumbledore before. Many of the students were

smirking; this woman obviously did not know how things were done at Hogwarts.

“Thank you, Headmaster,” Professor Umbridge simpered, “for those kind words of welcome.”

Her voice was high-pitched, breathy and little-girlish and, again, Harry felt a powerful rush of

dislike that he could not explain to himself; all he knew was that he loathed everything about her,

from her stupid voice to her fluffy pink cardigan. She gave another little throat-clearing cough

(“hem, hem”) and continued.

“Well, it is lovely to be back at Hogwarts, I must say!” She smiled, revealing very pointed teeth.

“And to see such happy little faces looking up at me!”

Harry glanced around. None of the faces he could see looked happy. On the contrary, they all

looked rather taken-aback at being addressed as though they were five years old.

“I am very much looking forward to getting to know you all and I’m sure we’ll be very good

friends!”

Students exchanged looks at this; some of them were barely concealing grins.

“I’ll be her friend as long as I don’t have to borrow that cardigan,” Parvati whispered to

Lavender, and both of them lapsed into silent giggles.

Professor Umbridge cleared her throat again (“hem, hem”), but when she continued, some of the

breathiness had vanished from her voice. She sounded much more businesslike and now her

words had a dull learned-by-heart sound to them.

“The Ministry of Magic has always considered the education of young witches and wizards to be

of vital importance. The rare gifts with which you were born may come to nothing if not nurtured

and honed by careful instruction. The ancient skills unique to the wizarding community must be

passed down the generations lest we lose them for ever. The treasure trove of magical knowledge

amassed by our ancestors must be guarded, replenished and polished by those who have been

called to the noble profession of teaching.”

Professor Umbridge paused here and made a little bow to her fellow staff members, none of

whom bowed back to her. Professor McGonagall’s dark eyebrows had contracted so that she

looked positively hawklike, and Harry distinctly saw her exchange a significant glance with

Professor Sprout as Umbridge gave another little “hem, hem” and went on with her speech.

“Every headmaster and headmistress of Hogwarts has brought something new to the weighty task of governing this historic school, and that is as it should be, for without progress there will be stagnation and decay. There again, progress for progress’s sake must be discouraged, for our

tried and tested traditions often require no tinkering. A balance, then, between old and new,

between permanence and change, between tradition and innovation…”

Harry found his attentiveness ebbing, as though his brain was slipping in and out of tune. The

quiet that always filled the Hall when Dumbledore was speaking was breaking up as students put

their heads together, whispering and giggling. Over on the Ravenclaw table Cho Chang was

chatting animatedly with her friends. A few seats along from Cho, Luna Lovegood had got

out The Quibbler again. Meanwhile, at the Hufflepuff table Ernie Macmillan was one of the few

still staring at Professor Umbridge, but he was glassy-eyed and Harry was sure he was only

pretending to listen in an attempt to live up to the new prefect’s badge gleaming on his chest.

Professor Umbridge did not seem to notice the restlessness of her audience. Harry had the

impression that a full-scale riot could have broken out under her nose and she would have

ploughed on with her speech. The teachers, however, were still listening very attentively, and

Hermione seemed to be drinking in every word Umbridge spoke, though, judging by her

expression, they were not at all to her taste.

“… because some changes will be for the better, while others will come, in the fullness of time,

to be recognized as errors of judgment. Meanwhile, some old habits will be retained, and rightly

so, whereas others, outmoded and outworn, must be abandoned. Let us move forward, then, into

a new era of openness, effectiveness and accountability, intent on preserving what ought to be

preserved, perfecting what needs to be perfected, and pruning wherever we find practices that

ought to be prohibited.”

She sat down. Dumbledore clapped. The staff followed his lead, though Harry noticed that

several of them brought their hands together only once or twice before stopping. A few students

joined in, but most had been taken unawares by the end of the speech, not having listened to

more than a few words of it, and before they could start applauding properly, Dumbledore had

stood up again.

“Thank you very much, Professor Umbridge, that was most illuminating,” he said, bowing to her. “Now, as I was saying, Quidditch tryouts will be held…”

“Yes, it certainly was illuminating,” said Hermione in a low voice.

“You’re not telling me you enjoyed it?” Ron said quietly, turning a glazed face towards

Hermione. “That was about the dullest speech I’ve ever heard, and I grew up with Percy.”

“I said illuminating, not enjoyable,” said Hermione. “It explained a lot.’

“Did it” said Harry in surprise. “Sounded like a load of waffle to me.”

“There was some important stuff hidden in the waffle,” said Hermione grimly.

“Was there?” said Ron blankly.

“How about: ‘progress for progress’s sake must be discouraged’? How about: ‘pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited’?”

“Well, what does that mean?” said Ron impatiently.

“I’ll tell you what it means,” said Hermione through gritted teeth. “It means the Ministry’s

interfering at Hogwarts.”

There was a great clattering and banging all around them; Dumbledore had obviously just

dismissed the school, because everyone was standing up ready to leave the Hall. Hermione

jumped up, looking flustered.

“Ron, we’re supposed to show the first-years where to go!”

“Oh yeah,” said Ron, who had obviously forgotten. “Hey - hey, you lot! Midgets!”

“Ron!”

“Well, they are, they’re titchy…”

“I know, but you can’t call them midgets! - First-years!” Hermione called commandingly along

the table. “This way, please!”

A group of new students walked shyly up the gap between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables,

all of them trying hard not to lead the group. They did indeed seem very small; Harry was sure

he had not appeared that young when he had arrived here. He grinned at them. A blond boy next

to Euan Abercrombie looked petrified; he nudged Euan and whispered something in his ear.

Euan Abercrombie looked equally frightened and stole a horrified look at Harry, who felt the

grin slide off his face like Stinksap.

“See you later,” he said dully to Ron and Hermione and he made his way out of the Great Hall

alone, doing everything he could to ignore more whispering, staring and pointing as he passed.

He kept his eyes fixed ahead as he wove his way through the crowd in the Entrance Hall, then he

hurried up the marble staircase, took a couple of concealed short cuts and had soon left most of

the crowds behind.

He had been stupid not to expect this, he thought angrily as he walked through the much emptier

upstairs corridors. Of course everyone was staring at him; he had emerged from the Triwizard

maze two months previously clutching the dead body of a fellow student and claiming to have

seen Lord Voldemort return to power. There had not been time last term to explain himself

before they’d all had to go home - even if he had felt up to giving the whole school a detailed

account of the terrible events in that graveyard.

Harry had reached the end of the corridor to the Gryffindor common room and come to a halt in

front of the portrait of the Fat Lady before he realized that he did not know the new password.

“Er…” he said glumly, staring up at the Fat Lady, who smoothed the folds of her pink satin dress

and looked sternly back at him.

“No password, no entrance,” she said loftily.

“Harry, I know it!” Someone panted up behind him and he turned to see Neville jogging towards

him. “Guess what it is? I’m actually going to be able to remember it for once -” He waved the

stunted little cactus he had shown them on the train. “Mimbulus mimbletonia!”

“Correct,” said the Fat Lady, and her portrait swung open towards them like a door, revealing a

circular hole in the wall behind, through which Harry and Neville now climbed.

The Gryffindor common room looked as welcoming as ever, a cozy circular tower room full of

dilapidated squashy armchairs and rickety old tables. A fire was crackling merrily in the grate

and a few people were warming their hands by it before going up to their dormitories; on the

other side of the room Fred and George Weasley were pinning something up on the noticeboard.

Harry waved goodnight to them and headed straight for the door to the boys’ dormitories; he was

not in much of a mood for talking at the moment. Neville followed him.

Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan had reached the dormitory first and were in the process of

covering the walls beside their beds with posters and photographs. They had been talking as

Harry pushed open the door but stopped abruptly the moment they saw him. Harry wondered

whether they had been talking about him, then whether he was being paranoid.

“Hi,” he said, moving across to his own trunk and opening it.

“Hey, Harry,” said Dean, who was putting on a pair of pajamas in the West Ham colors. “Good

holiday?”

“Not bad,” muttered Harry, as a true account of his holiday would have taken most of the night to relate and he could not face it. “You?”

“Yeah, it was okay,” chuckled Dean. “Better than Seamus’s, anyway, he was just telling me.”

“Why, what happened, Seamus?” Neville asked as he placed his Mimbulus mimbletonia tenderly

on his bedside cabinet.

Seamus did not answer immediately; he was making rather a meal of ensuring that his poster of

the Kenmare Kestrels Quidditch team was quite straight. Then he said, with his back still turned

to Harry, “Me mam didn’t want me to come back.”

“What?” said Harry, pausing in the act of pulling off his robes.

“She didn’t want me to come back to Hogwarts.”

Seamus turned away from his poster and pulled his own pajamas out of his trunk, still not

looking at Harry.

“But - why?” said Harry, astonished. He knew that Seamus’s mother was a witch and could not

understand, therefore, why she should have come over so Dursleyish.

Seamus did not answer until he had finished buttoning his pajamas.

“Well,” he said in a measured voice, “I suppose… because of you.”

“What d’you mean?” said Harry quickly.

His heart was beating rather fast. He felt vaguely as though something was closing in on him.

“Well,” said Seamus again, still avoiding Harry’s eye, “she… er… well, it’s not just you, it’s

Dumbledore, too…”

“She believes the Daily Prophet?” said Harry. “She thinks I’m a liar and Dumbledore’s an old

fool?”

Seamus looked up at him.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Harry said nothing. He threw his wand down on to his bedside table, pulled off his robes, stuffed

them angrily into his trunk and pulled on his pajamas. He was sick of it; sick of being the person

who was stared at and talked about all the time. If any of them knew, if any of them had the faintest idea what it felt like to be the one all these things had happened to… Mrs. Finnigan had no idea, the stupid woman, he thought savagely.

He got into bed and made to pull the hangings closed around him, but before he could do so,

Seamus said, “Look… what did happen that night when… you know, when… with Cedric

Diggory and all?”

Seamus sounded nervous and eager at the same time. Dean, who had been bending over his trunk

trying to retrieve a slipper, went oddly still and Harry knew he was listening hard.

“What are you asking me for?” Harry retorted. “Just read the Daily Prophet like your mother, why don’t you? That’ll tell you all you need to know.”

“Don’t you have a go at my mother,” Seamus snapped.

“I’ll have a go at anyone who calls me a liar,” said Harry.

“Don’t talk to me like that!”

“I’ll talk to you how I want,” said Harry, his temper rising so fast he snatched his wand back

from his bedside table. “If you’ve got a problem sharing a dormitory with me, go and ask

McGonagall if you can be moved… stop your mummy worrying -”

“Leave my mother out of this, Potter!”

“What’s going on?”

Ron had appeared in the doorway. His wide eyes traveled from Harry, who was kneeling on his

bed with his wand pointing at Seamus, to Seamus, who was standing there with his fists raised.

“He’s having a go at my mother!” Seamus yelled.

“What?” said Ron. “Harry wouldn’t do that — we met your mother, we liked her…”

“That’s before she started believing every word the stinking Daily Prophet writes about me!” said Harry at the top of his voice.

“Oh,” said Ron, comprehension dawning across his freckled face. “Oh… right.”

“You know what?” said Seamus heatedly, casting Harry a venomous look. “He’s right, I don’t

want to share a dormitory with him any more, he’s a madman.”

“That’s out of order, Seamus,” said Ron, whose ears were starting to glow red - always a danger

sign.

“Out of order, am I?” shouted Seamus, who in contrast with Ron was tuning paler. “You believe all the rubbish he’s come out with about You-Know-Who, do you, you reckon he’s telling the

truth?”

“Yeah, I do!” said Ron angrily.

“Then you’re mad, too,” said Seamus in disgust.

“Yeah? Well, unfortunately for you, pal, I’m also a prefect!” said Ron, jabbing himself in the

chest with a finger. “So unless you want detention, watch your mouth!”

Seamus looked for a few seconds as though detention would be a reasonable price to pay to say

what was going through his mind; but with a noise of contempt he turned on his heel, vaulted

into bed and pulled the hangings shut with such violence that they were ripped from the bed and

fell in a dusty pile to the floor. Ron glared at Seamus, then looked at Dean and Neville.

“Anyone else’s parents got a problem with Harry?” he said aggressively.

“My parents are Muggles, mate,” said Dean, shrugging. “They don’t know nothing about no

deaths at Hogwarts, because I’m not stupid enough to tell them.”

“You don’t know my mother, she’d weasel anything out of anyone!” Seamus snapped at him.

“Anyway your parents don’t get the Daily Prophet. They don’t know our Headmaster’s been

sacked from the Wizengamot and the International Confederation of Wizards because he’s losing

his marbles -”

“My gran says that’s rubbish,” piped up Neville. “She says it’s the Daily Prophet that’s going

downhill, not Dumbledore. She’s cancelled our subscription. We believe Harry” said Neville

simply. He climbed into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin, looking owlishly over them at

Seamus. “My gran’s always said You-Know-Who would come back one day. She says if

Dumbledore says he’s back, he’s back.”

Harry felt a rush of gratitude towards Neville. Nobody else said anything. Seamus got out his

wand, repaired the bed hangings and vanished behind them. Dean got into bed, rolled over and

fell silent. Neville, who appeared to have nothing more to say either, was gazing fondly at his

moonlit cactus.

Harry lay back on his pillows while Ron bustled around the next bed, putting his things away. He

felt shaken by the argument with Seamus, whom he had always liked very much. How many

more people were going to suggest that he was lying, or unhinged?

Had Dumbledore suffered like this all summer, as first the Wizengamot, then the International

Confederation of Wizards had thrown him from their ranks? Was it anger at Harry, perhaps, that

had stopped Dumbledore getting in touch with him for months? The two of them were in this

together, after all; Dumbledore had believed Harry, announced his version of events to the whole

school and then to the wider wizarding community. Anyone who thought Harry was a liar had to

think that Dumbledore was, too, or else that Dumbledore had been hoodwinked…

They’ll know we’re right in the end, thought Harry miserably, as Ron got into bed and

extinguished the last candle in the dormitory. But he wondered how many more attacks like

Seamus’s he would have to endure before that time came.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Professor Umbridge

Seamus dressed at top speed next morning and left the dormitory before Harry had even put on

his socks.

“Does he think he’ll turn into a nutter if he stays in a room with me too long?” asked Harry loudly, as the hem of Seamus’s robes whipped out of sight.

“Don’t worry about it, Harry,” Dean muttered, hoisting his schoolbag on to his shoulder, “he’s

just…”

But apparently he was unable to say exactly what Seamus was, and after a slightly awkward

pause followed him out of the room.

Neville and Ron both gave Harry an it’s-his-problem-not-yours look, but Harry was not much

consoled. How much more of this would he have to take?

“What’s the matter?” asked Hermione five minutes later, catching up with Harry and Ron halfway across the common room as they all headed towards breakfast. “You look absolutely - Oh for heaven’s sake.”

She was staring at the common-room noticeboard, where a large new sign had been put up.

GALLONS OF GALLEONS.

Pocket money failing to keep pace with your outgoings? Like to earn a little extra gold? Contact Fred and George Weasley, Gryffindor common room, for simple, part-time, virtually painless jobs. (We regret that all work is undertaken at applicant’s own risk.)

“They are the limit,” said Hermione grimly, taking d own the sign, which Fred and George had

pinned up over a poster giving the date of the first Hogsmeade weekend in October. “We’ll have to talk to them, Ron.”

Ron looked positively alarmed.

“Why?”

“Because we’re prefects!” said Hermione, as they c l imbed out through the portrait hole. “It’s up to us to stop this kind of thing!”

Ron said nothing; Harry could tell from his glum expression that the prospect of stopping Fred

and George doing exactly what they liked was not one he found inviting.

“Anyway, what’s up, Harry?” Hermione continued, as they walked down a flight of stairs lined

with portraits of old witches and wizards, all of whom ignored them, being engrossed in their

own conversation. “You look really angry about something.”

“Seamus reckons Harry’s lying about You-Know-Who,” said Ron succinctly, when Harry did not respond.

Hermione, who Harry had expected to react angrily on his behalf, sighed.

“Yes, Lavender thinks so too,” she said gloomily.

“Been having a nice little chat with her about whet her or not I’m a lying, attention-seeking prat,

have you?” Harry said loudly.

“No,” said Hermione calmly. “I told her to keep her big fat mouth shut about you, actually. And it would be quite nice if you stopped jumping down our throats, Harry, because in case you haven’t noticed, Ron and I are on your side.”

There was a short pause.

“Sorry,” said Harry in a low voice.

“That’s quite all right,” said Hermione with dignity… Then she shook her head. “Don’t you

remember what Dumbledore said at the last end-of-term feast?”

Harry and Ron both looked at her blankly and Hermione sighed again.

“About You-Know-Who. He said his ‘gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust —’”

“How do you remember stuff like that?” asked Ron, looking at her in admiration.

“I listen, Ron,” said Hermione, with a touch of asperity.

“So do I, but I still couldn’t tell you exactly what -”

“The point,” Hermione pressed on loudly, “is that this sort of thing is exactly what Dumbledore

was talking about. You-Know-Who’s only been back two months and we’ve already started

fighting among ourselves. And the Sorting Hats warning was the same: stand together, be united

—”

“And Harry got it right last night,” retorted Ron. “If that means we’re supposed to get matey with the Slytherins-fat chance.”

“Well, I think it’s a pity we’re not trying for a bit of inter-house unity,” said Hermione crossly.

They had reached the foot of the marble staircase. A line of fourth-year Ravenclaws was crossing

the Entrance Hall; they caught sight of Harry and hurried to form a tighter group, as though

frightened he might attack stragglers.

“Yeah, we really ought to be trying to make friends with people like that,” said Harry

sarcastically.

They followed the Ravenclaws into the Great Hall, all looking instinctively at the staff table as

they entered. Professor Grubbly-Plank was chatting to Professor Sinistra, the Astronomy teacher,

and Hagrid was once again conspicuous only by his absence. The enchanted ceiling above them

echoed Harry’s mood; it was a miserable rain-cloud grey.

“Dumbledore didn’t even mention how long that Grubbly-Plank woman’s staying,” he said, as they made their way across to the Gryffindor table.

“Maybe…” said Hermione thoughtfully.

“What?” said both Harry and Ron together.

“Well… maybe he didn’t want to draw attention to Hagrid not being here.”

“What d’you mean, draw attention to it?” said Ron, half-laughing. “How could we not notice?”

Before Hermione could answer, a tall black girl with long braided hair had marched up to Harry.

“Hi, Angelina.”

“Hi,” she said briskly, “good summer?” And without waiting for an answer, “Listen, I’ve been made Gryffindor Quidditch Captain.”

“Nice one,” said Harry, grinning at her; he suspected Angelina’s pep talks might not be as longwinded as Oliver Wood’s had been, which could only be an improvement.

“Yeah, well, we need a new Keeper now Oliver’s left. Tryouts are on Friday at five o’clock and I

want the whole team there, all right? Then we can see how the new personnel fit in.”

“Okay,” said Harry.

Angelina smiled at him and departed.

“I’d forgotten Wood had left,” said Hermione vaguely as she sat down beside Ron and pulled a

plate of toast towards her. “I suppose that will make quite a difference to the team?”

“I s’pose,” said Harry, taking the bench opposite. “He was a good Keeper…”

“Still, it won’t hurt to have some new blood, will it?” said Ron.

With a whoosh and a clatter, hundreds of owls came soaring in through the upper windows. They

descended all over the Hall, bringing letters and packages to their owners and showering the

breakfasters with droplets of water; it was clearly raining hard outside. Hedwig was nowhere to

be seen, but Harry was hardly surprised; his only correspondent was Sirius, and he doubted

Sirius would have anything new to tell him after only twenty-four hours apart. Hermione,

however, had to move her orange juice aside quickly to make way for a large damp barn owl

bearing a sodden Daily Prophet in its beak.

“What are you still getting that for?” said Harry irritably, thinking of Seamus as Hermione placed a Knut in the leather pouch on the owl’s leg and it took off again. “I’m not bothering… load of rubbish.”

“It’s best to know what the enemy is saying,” said Hermione darkly, and she unfurled the

newspaper and disappeared behind it, not emerging until Harry and Ron had finished eating.

“Nothing,” she said simply, rolling up the newspaper and laying it down by her plate. “Nothing

about you or Dumbledore or anything.”

Professor McGonagall was now moving along the table handing out schedules.

“Look at today!” groaned Ron. “History of Magic, double Potions, Divination and double Defense Against the Dark Arts… Binns, Snape, Trelawney and that Umbridge woman all in one day! I wish Fred and George’d hurry up and get those Skiving Snackboxes sorted…”

“Do mine ears deceive me?’“ said Fred, arriving with George and squeezing on to the bench beside Harry. “Hogwarts prefects surely don’t wish to skive off lessons?”

“Look what we’ve got today,” said Ron grumpily, shoving his timetable under Fred’s nose.

“That’s the worst Monday I’ve ever seen.”

“Fair point, little bro,” said Fred, scanning the column. “You can have a bit of Nosebleed Nougat

cheap if you like.”

“Why’s it cheap?” said Ron suspiciously.

“Because you’ll keep bleeding till you shrivel up, we haven’t got an antidote yet,” said George,

helping himself to a kipper.

“Cheers,” said Ron moodily, pocketing his timetable, “but I think I’ll take the lessons.”

“And speaking of your Skiving Snackboxes,” said Hermione, eyeing Fred and George beadily,

“you can’t advertise for testers on the Gryffindor noticeboard.”

“Says who?” said George, looking astonished.

“Says me,” said Hermione. “And Ron.”

“Leave me out of it,” said Ron hastily.

Hermione glared at him. Fred and George sniggered.

“You’ll be singing a different tune soon enough, Hermione,” said Fred, thickly buttering a

crumpet. “You’re starting your fifth year, you’ll be begging us for a Snackbox before long.”

“And why would starting fifth year mean I want a Skiving Snackbox?” asked Hermione.

“Fifth year’s OWL year,” said George.

“So?”

“So you’ve got your exams coming up, haven’t you? They’ll be keeping your noses so hard to that grindstone they’ll be rubbed raw,” said Fred with satisfaction.

“Half our year had minor breakdowns coming up to OWLs,” said George happily. “Tears and

tantrums… Patricia Stimpson kept coming over faint…”

“Kenneth Towler came out in boils, d’you remember?” said Fred reminiscently.

“That’s ‘cause you put Bulbadox powder in his pajamas,” said George.

“Oh yeah,” said Fred, grinning. “I’d forgotten… hard to keep track sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Anyway, it’s a nightmare of a year, the fifth,” said George. “If you care about exam results,

anyway. Fred and I managed to keep our spirits up somehow.”

“Yeah… you got, what was it, three OWLs each?” said Ron.

“Yep,” said Fred unconcernedly. “But we feel our futures lie outside the world of academic

achievement.”

“We seriously debated whether we were going to bother coming back for our seventh year,” said

George brightly, “now that we’ve got-”

He broke off at a warning look from Harry, who knew George had been about to mention the

Triwizard winnings he had given them.

“- now that we’ve got our OWLs,” George said hastily. “I mean, do we really need NEWTs? But

we didn’t think Mum could take us leaving school early, not on top of Percy turning out to be the

world’s biggest prat.”

“We’re not going to waste our last year here, though,” said Fred, looking affectionately around at

the Great Hall. “We’re going to use it to do a bit of market research, find out exactly what the

average Hogwarts student requires from a joke shop, carefully evaluate the results of our

research, then produce products to fit the demand.”

“But where are you going to get the gold to start a joke shop?” Hermione asked skeptically.

“You’re going to need all the ingredients and materials - and premises too, I suppose…”

Harry did not look at the twins. His face felt hot; he deliberately dropped his fork and dived

down to retrieve it. He heard Fred say overhead, “Ask us no questions and we’ll tell you no lies,

Hermione. C’mon, George, if we get there early we might be able to sell a few Extendable Ears

before Herbology.”

Harry emerged from under the table to see Fred and George walking away, each carrying a stack

of toast.

“What did that mean?” said Hermione, looking from Harry to Ron. “‘Ask us no questions… ’ Does that mean they’ve already got some gold to start a joke shop?”

“You know, I’ve been wondering about that,” said Ron, his brow furrowed. “They bought me a new set of dress robes this summer and I couldn’t understand where they got the Galleons…”

Harry decided it was time to steer the conversation out of these dangerous waters.

“D’you reckon it’s true this year’s going to be really tough? Because of the exams?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Ron. “Bound to be, isn’t it? OWLs are really important, affect the jobs you can

apply for and everything. We get career advice, too, later this year, Bill told me. So you can

choose what NEWTs you want to do next year.”

“D’you know what you want to do after Hogwarts?” Harry asked the other two, as they left the

Great Hall shortly afterwards and set off towards their History of Magic classroom.

“Not really,” said Ron slowly. “Except… well…”

He looked slightly sheepish.

“What?” Harry urged him.

‘“Well, it’d be cool to be an Auror,’“ said Ron in an off-hand voice.

“Yeah, it would,” said Harry fervently.

“But they’re, like, the elite,” said Ron. “You’ve got to be really good. What about you, Hermione?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’d like to do something really worthwhile.”

“An Auror’s worthwhile!” said Harry.

“Yes, it is, but it’s not the only worthwhile thing,” said Hermione thoughtfully, “I mean, if I could take SPEW further…”

Harry and Ron carefully avoided looking at each other.

History of Magic was by common consent the most boring subject ever devised by wizardkind.

Professor Binns, their ghost teacher, had a wheezy, droning voice that was almost guaranteed to

cause severe drowsiness within ten minutes, five in warm weather. He never varied the form of

their lessons, but lectured them without pausing while they took notes, or rather, gazed sleepily

into space. Harry and Ron had so far managed to scrape passes in this subject only by copying

Hermione’s notes before exams; she alone seemed able to resist the soporific power of Binns’s

voice.

Today, they suffered an hour and a half’s droning on the subject of giant wars. Harry heard just

enough within the first ten minutes to appreciate dimly that in another teacher’s hands this

subject might have been mildly interesting, but then his brain disengaged, and he spent the

remaining hour and twenty minutes playing hangman on a corner of his parchment with Ron,

while Hermione shot them filthy looks out of the corner of her eye.

“How would it be,” she asked them coldly, as they left the classroom for break (Binns drifting

away through the blackboard), “if I refused to lend you my notes this year?”

“We’d fail our OWL,” said Ron. “If you want that on your conscience, Hermione…”

“Well, you’d deserve it,” she snapped. “You don’t even try to listen to him, do you?”

“We do try” said Ron. “We just haven’t got your brains or your memory or your concentration -

you’re just cleverer than we are - is it nice to rub it in?”

“Oh, don’t give me that rubbish,” said Hermione, but she looked slightly mollified as she led the

way out into the damp courtyard.

A fine misty drizzle was falling, so that the people standing in huddles around the edges of the

yard looked blurred at the edges. Harry, Ron and Hermione chose a secluded corner under a

heavily dripping balcony, turning up the collars of their robes against the chilly September air

and talking about what Snape was likely to set them in the first lesson of the year. They had got

as far as agreeing that it was likely to be something extremely difficult, just to catch them off

guard after a two-month holiday, when someone walked around the corner towards them.

“Hello, Harry!”

It was Cho Chang and, what was more, she was on her own again. This was most unusual: Cho

was almost always surrounded by a gang of giggling girls; Harry remembered the agony of

trying to get her by herself to ask her to the Yule Ball.

“Hi,” said Harry, feeling his face grow hot. At least you’re not covered in Stinksap this time, he

told himself. Cho seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

“You got that stuff off, then?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, trying to grin as though the memory of their last meeting was funny as

opposed to mortifying. “So, did you… er… have a good summer?”

The moment he had said this he wished he hadn’t - Cedric had been Cho’s boyfriend and the

memory of his death must have affected her holiday almost as badly as it had affected Harrys.

Something seemed to tauten in her face, but she said, “Oh, it was all right, you know…”

“Is that a Tornados badge?” Ron demanded suddenly, pointing to the front of Cho’s robes, where a sky-blue badge emblazoned with a double gold ‘T’ was pinned. “You don’t support them, do you?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Cho.

“Have you always supported them, or just since they started winning the league?” said Ron, in

what Harry considered an unnecessarily accusatory tone of voice.

“I’ve supported them since I was six,” said Cho coolly. “Anyway… see you, Harry.”

She walked away. Hermione waited until Cho was halfway across the courtyard before rounding

on Ron.

“You are so tactless!”

“What? I only asked her if -”

“Couldn’t you tell she wanted to talk to Harry on her own?”

“So? She could’ve done, I wasn’t stopping -”

“Why on earth were you attacking her about her Quidditch team?”

“Attacking? I wasn’t attacking her, I was only -”

“Who cares if she supports the Tornados?”

“Oh, come on, half the people you see wearing those badges only bought them last season -”

“But what does it matter!”

“It means they’re not real fans, they’re just jumping on the bandwagon -”

“That’s the bell,” said Harry dully, because Ron and Hermione were bickering too loudly to hear

it. They did not stop arguing all the way down to Snape’s dungeon, which gave Harry plenty of

time to reflect that between Neville and Ron he would be lucky ever to have two minutes of

conversation with Cho that he could look back on without wanting to leave the country.

And yet, he thought, as they joined the queue lining up outside Snape’s classroom door, she had

chosen to come and talk to him, hadn’t she? She had been Cedric’s girlfriend; she could easily

have hated Harry for coming out of the Triwizard maze alive when Cedric had died, yet she was

talking to him in a perfectly friendly way, not as though she thought him mad, or a liar, or in

some horrible way responsible for Cedric’s death… yes, she had definitely chosen to come and

talk to him, and that made the second time in two days… and at this thought, Harry’s spirits rose.

Even the ominous sound of Snape’s dungeon door creaking open did not puncture the small,

hopeful bubble that seemed to have swelled in his chest. He filed into the classroom behind Ron

and Hermione and followed them to their usual table at the back, where he sat down between

Ron and Hermione and ignored the huffy, irritable noises now issuing from both of them.

“Settle down,” said Snape coldly, shutting the door behind him.

There was no real need for the call to order; the moment the class had heard the door close, quiet

had fallen and all fidgeting stopped. Snape’s mere presence was usually enough to ensure a

class’s silence.

“Before we begin today’s lesson,” said Snape, sweeping over to his desk and staring around at

them all, “I think it appropriate to remind you that next June you will be sitting an important

examination, during which you will prove how much you have learned about the composition

and use of magical potions. Moronic though some of this class undoubtedly are, I expect you to

scrape an ‘Acceptable’ in your OWL, or suffer my… displeasure.”

His gaze lingered this time on Neville, who gulped.

“After this year, of course, many of you will cease studying with me,” Snape went on. “I take only the very best into my NEWT Potions class, which means that some of us will certainly be saying goodbye.”

His eyes rested on Harry and his lip curled. Harry glared back, feeling a grim pleasure at the idea

that he would be able to give up Potions after fifth year.

“But we have another year to go before that happy moment of farewell,” said Snape softly, “so,

whether or not you are intending to attempt NEWT, I advise all of you to concentrate your

efforts upon maintaining the high pass level I have come to expect from my OWL students.

“Today we will be mixing a potion that often comes up at Ordinary Wizarding Level: the

Draught of Peace, a potion to calm anxiety and soothe agitation. Be warned: if you are too

heavy-handed with the ingredients you will put the drinker into a heavy and sometimes

irreversible sleep, so you will need to pay close attention to what you are doing.” On Harry’s left,

Hermione sat up a little straighter, her expression one of utmost attention. “The ingredients and

method -” Snape flicked his wand “- are on the blackboard -” (they appeared there) “- you will find everything you need —” he flicked his wand again “- in the store cupboard —” (the door of the said cupboard sprang open) “- you have an hour and a half… start.”

Just as Harry, Ron and Hermione had predicted, Snape could hardly have set them a more

difficult, fiddly potion. The ingredients had to be added to the cauldron in precisely the right

order and quantities; the mixture had to be stirred exactly the right number of times, firstly in

clockwise, then in anti-clockwise directions; the heat of the flames on which it was simmering

had to be lowered to exactly the right level for a specific number of minutes before the final

ingredient was added.

“A light silver vapour should now be rising from your potion,” called Snape, with ten minutes left to go.

Harry, who was sweating profusely, looked desperately around the dungeon. His own cauldron

was issuing copious amounts of dark grey steam; Ron’s was spitting green sparks. Seamus was

feverishly prodding the flames at the base of his cauldron with the tip of his wand, as they

seemed to be going out. The surface of Hermione’s potion, however, was a shimmering mist of

silver vapour, and as Snape swept by he looked down his hooked nose at it without comment,

which meant he could find nothing to criticize.

At Harry’s cauldron, however, Snape stopped, and looked down at it with a horrible smirk on his

face.

“Potter, what is this supposed to be?”

The Slytherins at the front of the class all looked up eagerly; they loved hearing Snape taunt

Harry.

“The Draught of Peace,” said Harry tensely.

“Tell me, Potter,” said Snape softly, “can you read?”

Draco Malfoy laughed.

“Yes, I can,” said Harry, his fingers clenched tightly around his wand.

“Read the third line of the instructions for me, Potter.”

Harry squinted at the blackboard; it was not easy to make out the instructions through the haze of

multi-colored steam now filling the dungeon.

“‘Add powdered moonstone, stir three times counter-clockwise, allow to simmer for seven

minutes then add two drops of syrup of hellebore.’”

His heart sank. He had not added syrup of hellebore, but had proceeded straight to the fourth line

of the instructions after allowing his potion to simmer for seven minutes.

“Did you do everything on the third line, Potter?”

“No,” said Harry very quietly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“No,” said Harry, more loudly. “I forgot the hellebore.”

“I know you did, Potter, which means that this mess is utterly worthless. Evanesco.”

The contents of Harry’s potion vanished; he was left standing foolishly beside an empty

cauldron.

“Those of you who have managed to read the instructions, fill one flagon with a sample of your

potion, label it clearly with your name and bring it up to my desk for testing,” said Snape.

“Homework: twelve inches of parchment on the properties of moonstone and its uses in potion making, to be handed in on Thursday.”

While everyone around him filled their flagons, Harry cleared away his things, seething. His

potion had been no worse than Ron’s, which was now giving off a foul odour of bad eggs; or

Neville’s, which had achieved the consistency of just-mixed cement and which Neville was now

having to gouge out of his cauldron; yet it was he, Harry, who would be receiving zero marks for

the day’s work. He stuffed his wand back into his bag and slumped down on to his seat, watching

everyone else march up to Snape’s desk with filled and corked flagons. When at long last the bell

rang, Harry was first out of the dungeon and had already started his lunch by the time Ron and

Hermione joined him in the Great Hall. The ceiling had turned an even murkier grey during the

morning. Rain was lashing the high windows.

“That was really unfair,” said Hermione consolingly, sitting down next to Harry and helping

herself to shepherd’s pie. “Your potion wasn’t nearly as bad as Goyle’s; when he put it in his

flagon the whole thing shattered and set his robes on fire.”

“Yeah, well,” said Harry, glowering at his plate, “since when has Snape ever been fair to me?”

Neither of the others answered; all three of them knew that Snape and Harry’s mutual enmity had

been absolute from the moment Harry had set foot in Hogwarts.

“I did think he might be a bit better this year,” said Hermione in a disappointed voice. “I mean…

you know…” she looked around carefully; there were half a dozen empty seats on either side of

them and nobody was passing the table “… now he’s in the Order and everything.”

“Poisonous toadstools don’t change their spots,” said Ron sagely. “Anyway I’ve always thought

Dumbledore was cracked trusting Snape. Where’s the evidence he ever really stopped working for You-Know-Who?”

“I think Dumbledore’s probably got plenty of evidence, even if he doesn’t share it with you, Ron,” snapped Hermione.

“Oh, shut up, the pair of you,” said Harry heavily, as Ron opened his mouth to argue back.

Hermione and Ron both froze, looking angry and offended. “Can’t you give it a rest?” said Harry. “You’re always having a go at each other, it’s driving me mad.” And abandoning his shepherd’s pie, he swung his schoolbag back over his shoulder and left them sitting there.

He walked up the marble staircase two steps at a time, past the many students hurrying towards

lunch. The anger that had just flared so unexpectedly still blazed inside him, and the vision of

Ron and Hermione’s shocked faces afforded him a sense of deep satisfaction. Serve them right,

he thought, why can’t they give it a rest… bickering all the time… it’s enough to drive anyone upthe wall…

He passed the large picture of Sir Cadogan the knight on a landing; Sir Cadogan drew his sword

and brandished it fiercely at Harry, who ignored him.

“Come back, you scurvy dog! Stand fast and fight!” yelled Sir Cadogan in a muffled voice from

behind his visor, but Harry merely walked on and when Sir Cadogan attempted to follow him by

running into a neighboring picture, he was rebuffed by its inhabitant, a large and angry-looking

wolfhound.

Harry spent the rest of the lunch hour sitting alone underneath the trapdoor at the top of North

Tower. Consequently, he was the first to ascend the silver ladder that led to Sibyll Trelawney’s

classroom when the bell rang.

After Potions, Divination was Harrys least favorite class, which was due mainly to Professor

Trelawney’s habit of predicting his premature death every few lessons. A thin woman, heavily

draped in shawls and glittering with strings of beads, she always reminded Harry of some kind of

insect, with her glasses hugely magnifying her eyes. She was busy putting copies of battered

leather-bound books on each of the spindly little tables with which her room was littered when

Harry entered the room, but the light cast by the lamps covered by scarves and the low-burning,

sickly-scented fire was so dim she appeared not to notice him as he took a seat in the shadows.

The rest of the class arrived over the next five minutes. Ron emerged from the trapdoor, looked

around carefully, spotted Harry and made directly for him, or as directly as he could while

having to wend his way between tables, chairs and overstuffed pouffes.

“Hermione and me have stopped arguing,” he said, sitting down beside Harry.

“Good,” grunted Harry.

“But Hermione says she thinks it would be nice if you stopped taking out your temper on us,” said Ron.

“I’m not -”

“I’m just passing on the message,” said Ron, talking over him. “But I reckon she’s right. It’s not our fault how Seamus and Snape treat you.”

“I never said it -”

“Good-day,” said Professor Trelawney in her usual misty, dreamy voice, and Harry broke off,

again feeling both annoyed and slightly ashamed of himself. “And welcome back to Divination. I

have, of course, been following your fortunes most carefully over the holidays, and am delighted

to see that you have all returned to Hogwarts safely - as, of course, I knew you would.

“You will find on the tables before you copies of The Dream Oracle, by Inigo Imago. Dream

interpretation is a most important means of divining the future and one that may very probably

be tested in your OWL. Not, of course, that I believe examination passes or failures are of the

remotest importance when it comes to the sacred art of divination. If you have the Seeing Eye,

certificates and grades matter very little. However, the Headmaster likes you to sit the

examination, so…”

Her voice trailed away delicately, leaving them all in no doubt that Professor Trelawney

considered her subject above such sordid matters as examinations.

“Turn, please, to the introduction and read what Imago has to say on the matter of dream

interpretation. Then, divide into pairs. Use The Dream Oracle to interpret each others most recent dreams. Carry on.”

The one good thing to be said for this lesson was that it was not a double period. By the time

they had all finished reading the introduction of the book, they had barely ten minutes left for

dream interpretation. At the table next to Harry and Ron, Dean had paired up with Neville, who

immediately embarked on a long-winded explanation of a nightmare involving a pair of giant

scissors wearing his grandmother’s best hat; Harry and Ron merely looked at each other glumly.

“I never remember my dreams,” said Ron, “you say one.”

“You must remember one of them,” said Harry impatiently.

He was not going to share his dreams with anyone. He knew perfectly well what his regular

nightmare about a graveyard meant, he did not need Ron or Professor Trelawney or the

stupid Dream Oracle to tell him.

“Well, I dreamed I was playing Quidditch the other night,” said Ron, screwing up his face in an

effort to remember. “What d’you reckon that means?”

“Probably that you’re going to be eaten by a giant marshmallow or something,” said Harry,

turning the pages of The Dream Oracle without interest. It was very dull work looking up bits of

dreams in the Oracle and Harry was not cheered up when Professor Trelawney set them the task

of keeping a dream diary for a month as homework. When the bell went, he and Ron led the way

back down the ladder, Ron grumbling loudly.

“D’you realize how much homework we’ve got already? Binns set us a foot-and-a-half-long essay on giant wars, Snape wants a foot on the use of moonstones, and now we’ve got a month’s dream diary from Trelawney! Fred and George weren’t wrong about OWL year, were they? That

Umbridge woman had better not give us any…”

When they entered the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom they found Professor Umbridge

already seated at the teacher’s desk, wearing the fluffy pink cardigan of the night before and the

black velvet bow on top of her head. Harry was again reminded forcibly of a large fly perched

unwisely on top of an even larger toad.

The class was quiet as it entered the room; Professor Umbridge was, as yet, an unknown quantity

and nobody knew how strict a disciplinarian she was likely to be.

“Well, good afternoon!” she said, when finally the whole class had sat down.

A few people mumbled “good afternoon” in reply.

“Tut, tut,” said Professor Umbridge. “That won’t do, now, will it? I should like you, please, to reply ‘Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge’. One more time, please. Good afternoon, class!”

“Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge,” they chanted back at her.

“There, now,” said Professor Umbridge sweetly. “That wasn’t too difficult, was it? Wands away

and quills out, please.”

Many of the class exchanged gloomy looks; the order “wands away” had never yet been followed by a lesson they had found interesting. Harry shoved his wand back inside his bag and pulled out quill, ink and parchment. Professor Umbridge opened her handbag, extracted her own wand, which was an unusually short one, and tapped the blackboard sharply with it; words appeared on the board at once:

Defense Against the Dark Arts A Return to Basic Principles

“Well now, your teaching in this subject has been rather disrupted and fragmented, hasn’t it?”

stated Professor Umbridge, turning to face the class with her hands clasped neatly in front of her.

“The constant changing of teachers, many of whom do not seem to have followed any Ministry approved curriculum, has unfortunately resulted in your being far below the standard we would

expect to see in your OWL year.

“You will be pleased to know, however, that these problems are now to be rectified. We will be

following a carefully structured, theory-centerd, Ministry-approved course of defensive magic

this year. Copy down the following, please.”

She rapped the blackboard again; the first message vanished and was replaced by: Course

Aims:

1. Understanding the principles underlying defensive magic.

2. Learning to recognize situations in which defensive magic can legally be used.

3. Placing the use of defensive magic in a context for practical use.

For a couple of minutes the room was full of the sound of scratching quills on parchment. When

everyone had copied down Professor Umbridge’s three course aims she asked, “Has everybody

got a copy of Defensive Magical Theory by Wilbert Slinkhard?”

There was a dull murmur of assent throughout the class.

“I think we’ll try that again,” said Professor Umbridge. “When I ask you a question, I should like

you to reply, ‘Yes, Professor Umbridge’, or ‘No, Professor Umbridge’. So: has everyone got a

copy of Defensive Magical Theory by Wilbert Slinkhard?”

“Yes, Professor Umbridge,” rang through the room.

“Good,” said Professor Umbridge. “I should like you to turn to page five and read ‘Chapter One,

Basics for Beginners’. There will be no need to talk.”

Professor Umbridge left the blackboard and settled herself in the chair behind the teacher’s desk,

observing them all closely with those pouchy toad’s eyes. Harry turned to page five of his copy

of Defensive Magical Theory and started to read.

It was desperately dull, quite as bad as listening to Professor Binns. He felt his concentration

sliding away from him; he had soon read the same line half a dozen times without taking in more

than the first few words. Several silent minutes passed. Next to him, Ron was absent-mindedly

turning his quill over and over in his fingers, staring at the same spot on the page. Harry looked

right and received a surprise to shake him out of his torpor. Hermione had not even opened her

copy of Defensive Magical Theory. She was staring fixedly at Professor Umbridge with her hand

in the air.

Harry could not remember Hermione ever neglecting to read when instructed to, or indeed

resisting the temptation to open any book that came under her nose. He looked at her

enquiringly, but she merely shook her head slightly to indicate that she was not about to answer

questions, and continued to stare at Professor Umbridge, who was looking just as resolutely in

another direction.

After several more minutes had passed, however, Harry was not the only one watching

Hermione. The chapter they had been instructed to read was so tedious that more and more

people were choosing to watch Hermione’s mute attempt to catch Professor Umbridge’s eye

rather than struggle on with ‘Basics for Beginners’.

When more than half the class were staring at Hermione rather than at their books, Professor

Umbridge seemed to decide that she could ignore the situation no longer.

“Did you want to ask something about the chapter, dear?” she asked Hermione, as though she had only just noticed her.

“Not about the chapter, no,” said Hermione.

“Well, we’re reading just now,” said Professor Umbridge, showing her small pointed teeth. “If you have other queries we can deal with them at the end of class.”

“I’ve got a query about your course aims,” said Hermione.

Professor Umbridge raised her eyebrows.

“And your name is?”

“Hermione Granger,” said Hermione.

“Well, Miss Granger, I think the course aims are perfectly clear if you read them through

carefully” said Professor Umbridge in a voice of determined sweetness.

“Well, I don’t,” said Hermione bluntly. “There’s nothing written up there about using defensive

spells.”

There was a short silence in which many members of the class turned their heads to frown at the

three course aims still written on the blackboard.

“Using defensive spells?” Professor Umbridge repeated with a little laugh. “Why, I can’t imagine any situation arising in my classroom that would require you to use a defensive spell, Miss Granger. You surely aren’t expecting to be attacked during class?”

“We’re not going to use magic?” Ron exclaimed loudly.

“Students raise their hands when they wish to speak in my class, Mr. -?”

“Weasley,” said Ron, thrusting his hand into the air.

Professor Umbridge, smiling still more widely, turned her back on him. Harry and Hermione

immediately raised their hands too. Professor Umbridge’s pouchy eyes lingered on Harry for a

moment before she addressed Hermione.

“Yes, Miss Granger? You wanted to ask something else?”

“Yes,” said Hermione. “Surely the whole point of Defence Against the Dark Arts is to practice

defensive spells?”

“Are you a Ministry-trained educational expert, Miss Granger?” asked Professor Umbridge, in her falsely sweet voice.

“No, but -”

“Well then, I’m afraid you are not qualified to decide what the ‘whole point’ of any class is.

Wizards much older and cleverer than you have devised our new program of study. You will

be learning about defensive spells in a secure, risk-free way -”

“What use is that?” said Harry loudly. “If we’re going to be attacked, it won’t be in a -”

“Hand, Mr. Potter!” sang Professor Umbridge.

Harry thrust his fist in the air. Again, Professor Umbridge promptly turned away from him, but

now several other people had their hands up, too.

“And your name is?” Professor Umbridge said to Dean.

“Dean Thomas.”

“Well, Mr. Thomas?”

“Well, it’s like Harry said, isn’t it?” said Dean. “If we’re going to be attacked, it won’t be risk free.”

“I repeat,” said Professor Umbridge, smiling in a very irritating fashion at Dean, “do you expect to be attacked during my classes?”

“No, but -”

Professor Umbridge talked over him. “I do not wish to criticize the way things have been run in

this school,” she said, an unconvincing smile stretching her wide mouth, “but you have been

exposed to some very irresponsible wizards in this class, very irresponsible indeed - not to

mention,” she gave a nasty little laugh, “extremely dangerous half-breeds.”

“If you mean Professor Lupin,” piped up Dean angrily, “he was the best we ever -”

“Hand, Mr. Thomas! As I was saying - you have been introduced to spells that have been

complex, inappropriate to your age group and potentially lethal. You have been frightened into

believing that you are likely to meet Dark attacks every other day -”

“No we haven’t,” Hermione said, “we just -”

“Your hand is not up, Miss Granger!”

Hermione put up her hand. Professor Umbridge turned away from her.

“It is my understanding that my predecessor not only performed illegal curses in front of you, he

actually performed them on you.”

“Well, he turned out to be a maniac, didn’t he?” said Dean hotly. “Mind you, we still learned

loads.”

“Your hand is not up, Mr. Thomas!” trilled Professor Umbridge. “Now, it is the view of the

Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be more than sufficient to get you through your

examination, which, after all, is what school is all about. And your name is?” she added, staring

at Parvati, whose hand had just shot up.

“Parvati Patil, and isn’t there a practical bit in our Defense Against the Dark Arts OWL? Aren’t

we supposed to show that we can actually do the counter-curses and things?”

“As long as you have studied the theory hard enough, there is no reason why you should not be

able to perform the spells under carefully controlled examination conditions,” said Professor

Umbridge dismissively.

“Without ever practicing them beforehand?” said Parvati incredulously. “Are you telling us that the first time we’ll get to do the spells will be during our exam?”

“I repeat, as long as you have studied the theory hard enough -”

“And what good’s theory going to be in the real world?” said Harry loudly, his fist in the air again.

Professor Umbridge looked up.

“This is school, Mr. Potter, not the real world,” she said softly.

“So we’re not supposed to be prepared for what’s waiting for us out there?”

“There is nothing waiting out there, Mr. Potter.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Harry. His temper, which seemed to have been bubbling just beneath the surface all day, was reaching boiling point.

“Who do you imagine wants to attack children like yourselves?” enquired Professor Umbridge in

a horribly honeyed voice.

“Hmm, let’s think…” said Harry in a mock thoughtful voice. “Maybe… Lord Voldemort!”

Ron gasped; Lavender Brown uttered a little scream; Neville slipped sideways off his stool.

Professor Umbridge, however, did not flinch. She was staring at Harry with a grimly satisfied

expression on her face.

“Ten points from Gryffindor, Mr. Potter.”

The classroom was silent and still. Everyone was staring at either Umbridge or Harry.

“Now, let me make a few things quite plain.”

Professor Umbridge stood up and leaned towards them, her stubby-fingered hands splayed on her

desk.

“You have been told that a certain Dark wizard has returned from the dead -”

“He wasn’t dead,” said Harry angrily, “but yeah, he’s returned!”

‘“Mr-Potter-you-have-already-lost-your-house-ten-points-do-not-make-matters-worse-for yourself,” said Professor Umbridge in one breath without looking at him. “As I was saying, you have been informed that a certain Dark wizard is at large once again. This is a lie.”

“It is NOT a lie!” said Harry. “I saw him, I fought him!”

“Detention, Mr. Potter!” said Professor Umbridge triumphantly. “Tomorrow evening. Five

o’clock. My office. I repeat, this is a lie. The Ministry of Magic guarantees that you are not in

danger from any Dark wizard. If you are still worried, by all means come and see me outside

class hours. If someone is alarming you with fibs about reborn Dark wizards, I would like to hear

about it. I am here to help. I am your friend. And now, you will kindly continue your reading.

Page five, ‘Basics for Beginners’.”

Professor Umbridge sat down behind her desk. Harry, however, stood up. Everyone was staring

at him; Seamus looked half-scared, half-fascinated.

“Harry, no!” Hermione whispered in a warning voice, tugging at his sleeve, but Harry jerked his

arm out of her reach.

“So, according to you, Cedric Diggory dropped dead of his own accord, did he?” Harry asked, his voice shaking.

There was a collective intake of breath from the class, for none of them, apart from Ron and

Hermione, had ever heard Harry talk about what had happened on the night Cedric had died.

They stared avidly from Harry to Professor Umbridge, who had raised her eyes and was staring

at him without a trace of a fake smile on her face.

“Cedric Diggory’s death was a tragic accident,” she said coldly.

“It was murder,” said Harry. He could feel himself shaking. He had hardly spoken to anyone about this, least of all thirty eagerly listening classmates. “Voldemort killed him and you know it.”

Professor Umbridge’s face was quite blank. For a moment, Harry thought she was going to

scream at him. Then she said, in her softest, most sweetly girlish voice, “Come here, Mr. Potter,

dear.”

He kicked his chair aside, strode around Ron and Hermione and up to the teacher’s desk. He

could feel the rest of the class holding its breath. He felt so angry he did not care what happened

next.

Professor Umbridge pulled a small roll of pink parchment out of her handbag, stretched it out on

the desk, dipped her quill into a bottle of ink and started scribbling, hunched over so that Harry

could not see what she was writing. Nobody spoke. After a minute or so she rolled up the

parchment and tapped it with her wand; it sealed itself seamlessly so that he could not open it.

“Take this to Professor McGonagall, dear,” said Professor Umbridge, holding out the note to him.

He took it from her without saying a word, turned on his heel and left the room, not even looking

back at Ron and Hermione, slamming the classroom door shut behind him. He walked very fast

along the corridor, the note to McGonagall clutched tight in his hand, and turning a corner

walked slap into Peeves the poltergeist, a wide-mouthed little man floating on his back in midair,

juggling several inkwells.

“Why it’s Potty Wee Potter!” cackled Peeves, allowing two of the inkwells to fall to the ground

where they smashed and spattered the walls with ink; Harry jumped backwards out of the way

with a snarl.

“Get out of it, Peeves.”

“Oooh, Crackpot’s feeling cranky” said Peeves, pursuing Harry along the corridor, leering as he

zoomed along above him. “What is it this time, my fine Potty friend? Hearing voices? Seeing

visions? Speaking in -” Peeves blew a gigantic raspberry “— tongues?”

“I said, leave me ALONE!” Harry shouted, running down the nearest flight of stairs, but Peeves

merely slid down the banister on his back beside him.

“Oh, most think he’s barking, the potty wee lad, But some are more kindly and think he’s just sad, but Peevesy knows better and says that he’s mad — “

“SHUT UP!”

A door to his left flew open and Professor McGonagall emerged from her office looking grim

and slightly harassed.

“What on earth are you shouting about, Potter?” she snapped, as Peeves cackled gleefully and

zoomed out of sight. ‘“Why aren’t you in class?”

“I’ve been sent to see you,” said Harry stiffly.

“Sent? What do you mean, sent?”

He held out the note from Professor Umbridge. Professor McGonagall took it from him,

frowning, slit it open with a tap of her wand, stretched it out and began to read. Her eyes zoomed

from side to side behind their square spectacles as she read what Umbridge had written, and with

each line they became narrower.

“Come in here, Potter.”

He followed her inside her study. The door closed automatically behind him.

“Well?” said Professor McGonagall, rounding on him. “Is this true?”

“Is what true?” Harry asked, rather more aggressively than he had intended. “Professor?” he added, in an attempt to sound more polite.

“Is it true that you shouted at Professor Umbridge?”

“Yes,” said Harry.

“You called her a liar?”

“Yes.”

“You told her He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back?”

“Yes.”

Professor McGonagall sat down behind her desk, watching Harry closely. Then she said, “Have a biscuit, Potter.”

“Have - what?”

“Have a biscuit,” she repeated impatiently, indicating a tartan tin of cookies lying on top of one of the piles of papers on her desk. “And sit down.”

There had been a previous occasion when Harry, expecting to be caned by Professor

McGonagall, had instead been appointed by her to the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He sank into a

chair opposite her and helped himself to a Ginger Newt, feeling just as confused and wrong footed as he had done on that occasion.

Professor McGonagall set down Professor Umbridge’s note and looked very seriously at Harry.

“Potter, you need to be careful.”

Harry swallowed his mouthful of Ginger Newt and stared at her. Her tone of voice was not at all

what he was used to; it was not brisk, crisp and stern; it was low and anxious and somehow much

more human than usual.

“Misbehavior in Dolores Umbridge’s class could cost you much more than house points and a

detention.”

“What do you -?”

“Potter, use your common sense,” snapped Professor McGonagall, with an abrupt return to her

usual manner. “You know where she comes from, you must know to whom she is reporting.”

The bell rang for the end of the lesson. Overhead and all around came the elephantine sounds of

hundreds of students on the move.

“It says here she’s given you detention every evening this week, starting tomorrow,” Professor

McGonagall said, looking down at Umbridge’s note again.

“Every evening this week!” Harry repeated, horrified. “But, Professor, couldn’t you -?”

“No, I couldn’t,” said Professor McGonagall flatly.

“But -”

“She is your teacher and has every right to give you detention. You will go to her room at five

o’clock tomorrow for the first one. Just remember: tread carefully around Dolores Umbridge.”

“But I was telling the truth!” said Harry, outraged. “Voldemort is back, you know he is; Professor Dumbledore knows he is -”

“For heaven’s sake, Potter!” said Professor McGonagall, straightening her glasses angrily (she had winced horribly when he had used Voldemort’s name). “Do you really think this is about truth or lies? It’s about keeping your head down and your temper under control!”

She stood up, nostrils wide and mouth very thin, and Harry stood up, too.

“Have another biscuit,” she said irritably, thrusting the tin at him.

“No, thanks,” said Harry coldly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped.

He took one.

“Thanks,” he said grudgingly.

“Didn’t you listen to Dolores Umbridge’s speech at the start-of-term feast, Potter?”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “Yeah… she said… progress will be prohibited or… well, it meant that… that the Ministry of Magic is trying to interfere at Hogwarts.”

Professor McGonagall eyed him closely for a moment, then sniffed, walked around her desk and

held open the door for him.

“Well, I’m glad you listen to Hermione Granger at any rate,” she said, pointing him out of her

office.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Detention with Dolores

Dinner in the Great Hall that night was not a pleasant experience for Harry. The news about his

shouting match with Umbridge had traveled exceptionally fast even by Hogwarts’ standards. He

heard whispers all around him as he sat eating between Ron and Hermione. The funny thing was

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

On the contrary, it was as though they were hoping he would get angry and start shouting again,

so that they could hear his story first-hand.

“He says he saw Cedric Diggory murdered…”

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

“Come off it…”

“Who does he think he’s kidding?”

“Pur-Lease…”

“What I don’t get,” said Harry through clenched teeth, laying down his knife and fork (his hands

were shaking too much to hold them steady), “is why they all believed the story two months ago

when Dumbledore told them…”

“The thing is, Harry, I’m not sure they did,” said Hermione grimly. “Oh, let’s get out of here.”

She slammed down her own knife and fork; Ron looked longingly at his half-finished apple pie

but followed suit. People stared at them all the way out of the Hall.

“What d’you mean, you’re not sure they believed Dumbledore?” Harry asked Hermione when

they reached the first-floor landing.

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

arrived back in the middle of the lawn clutching Cedric’s dead body… none of us saw what

happened in the maze… we just had Dumbledore’s word for it that You-Know-Who had come

back and killed Cedric and fought you.”

“Which is the truth!” said Harry loudly.

“I know it is, Harry, so will you please stop biting my head off?” said Hermione wearily. “It’s just that before the truth could sink in, everyone went home for the summer, where they spent two months reading about how you’re a nutcase and Dumbledore’s going senile!”

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

Tower. Harry felt as though his first day had lasted a week, but he still had a mountain of

homework to do before bed. A dull pounding pain was developing over his right eye. He glanced

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

There was still no light in Hagrid’s cabin.

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

open to reveal the hole behind it and the three of them scrambled through it.

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

uncoiled himself from an armchair and trotted to meet them, purring loudly, and when Harry,

Ron and Hermione took their three favorite chairs at the fireside he leapt lightly on to

Hermione’s lap and curled up there like a furry ginger cushion. Harry gazed into the flames,

feeling drained and exhausted.

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

jump; Crookshanks leapt off her, looking affronted. She pounded the arms of her chair in fury, so

that bits of stuffing leaked out of the holes. “How can he let that terrible woman teach us? And in

our OWL year, too!”

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

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

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

playing at?”

“And she’s trying to get people to spy for her,” said Ron darkly. “Remember when she said she wanted us to come and tell her if we hear anyone saying You-Know-Who’s back?”

“Of course she’s here to spy on us all, that’s obvious, why else would Fudge have wanted her to

come?” snapped Hermione.

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

just… let’s just do that homework, get it out of the way…”

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

coming back from dinner now. Harry kept his face averted from the portrait hole, but could still

sense the stares he was attracting.

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

moonstone… and its uses… in potion-making…” he muttered, writing the words across the top

of his parchment as he spoke them. “There.” He underlined the title, then looked up expectantly

at Hermione.

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

But Hermione was not listening; she was squinting over into the far corner of the room, where

Fred, George and Lee Jordan were now sitting at the center of a knot of innocent-looking first years, all of whom were chewing something that seemed to have come out of a large paper bag

that Fred was holding.

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

“Come on, Ron.”

“I - what?” said Ron, plainly playing for time. “No- come on, Hermione - we can’t tell them off

for giving out sweets.”

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

“Fainting Fancies?” Harry suggested quietly.

One by one, as though hit over the head with an invisible mallet, the first-years were slumping

unconscious in their seats; some slid right on to the floor, others merely hung over the arms of

their chairs, their tongues lolling out. Most of the people watching were laughing; Hermione,

however, squared her shoulders and marched directly over to where Fred and George now stood

with clipboards, closely observing the unconscious first-years. Ron rose halfway out of his chair,

hovered uncertainly for a moment or two, then muttered to Harry, “She’s got it under control,”

before sinking as low in his chair as his lanky frame permitted.

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

surprise.

“Yeah, you’re right,” said George, nodding, “this dosage looks strong enough, doesn’t it?”

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

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

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

“Rubbish,” said Fred.

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

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

A few of the first-years were indeed stirring. Several looked so shocked to find themselves lying

on the floor, or dangling off their chairs, that Harry was sure Fred and George had not warned

them what the sweets were going to do.

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

“I - I think so,” she said shakily.

“Excellent,” said Fred happily, but the next second Hermione had snatched both his clipboard and the paper bag of Fainting Fancies from his hands.

“It is NOT excellent!”

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

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

“We’re not going to make them ill, we’ve already tested them all on ourselves, this is just to see

if everyone reacts the same -”

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

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

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

Onlookers all over the room were laughing. Hermione drew herself up to her full height; her eyes were narrowed and her bushy hair seemed to crackle with electricity.

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

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

“Oh, yes, I would,” said Hermione grimly. “I can’t stop you eating the stupid things yourselves,

but you’re not to give them to the first-years.”

Fred and George looked thunderstruck. It was clear that as far as they were concerned,

Hermione’s threat was way below the belt. With a last threatening look at them, she thrust Fred’s

clipboard and the bag of Fancies back into his arms, and stalked back to her chair by the fire. Ron was now so low in his seat that his nose was roughly level with his knees.

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

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

Hermione stared down at her blank piece of parchment for a few seconds, then said edgily, “Oh,

it’s no good, I can’t concentrate now. I’m going to bed.”

She wrenched her bag open; Harry thought she was about to put her books away, but instead she

pulled out two misshapen woolly objects, placed them carefully on a table by the fireplace,

covered them with a few screwed-up bits of parchment and a broken quill and stood back to

admire the effect.

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

sanity.

“They’re hats for house-elves,” she said briskly, now stuffing her books back into her bag. “I did

them over the summer. I’m a really slow knitter without magic but now I’m back at school I

should be able to make lots more.”

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

with rubbish first?”

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

“That’s not on,” said Ron angrily. “You’re trying to trick them into picking up the hats. You’re

setting them free when they might not want to be free.”

“Of course they want to be free!” said Hermione at once, though her face was turning pink.

“Don’t you dare touch those hats, Ron!”

She turned on her heel and left. Ron waited until she had disappeared through the door to the

girls’ dormitories, then cleared the rubbish off the woolly hats.

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

parchment on which he had written the title of Snape’s essay, “there’s no point trying to finish

this now, I can’t do it without Hermione, I haven’t got a clue what you’re supposed to do with

moonstones, have you?”

Harry shook his head, noticing as he did so that the ache in his right temple was getting worse.

He thought of the long essay on giant wars and the pain stabbed at him sharply. Knowing

perfectly well that when the morning came, he would regret not finishing his homework that

night, he piled his books back into his bag.

“I’m going to bed too.”

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

Harry had a fleeting impression that Seamus had opened his mouth to speak, but he sped up and

reached the soothing peace of the stone spiral staircase without having to endure any more

provocation.

The following day dawned just as leaden and rainy as the previous one. Hagrid was still absent

from the staff table at breakfast.

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

Hermione yawned widely and poured herself some coffee. She looked mildly pleased about

something, and when Ron asked her what she had to be so happy about, she simply said, “The

hats have gone. Seems the house-elves do want freedom after all.”

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

Hermione did not speak to him all morning.

Double Charms was succeeded by double Transfiguration. Professor Flitwick and Professor

McGonagall both spent the first fifteen minutes of their lessons lecturing the class on the

importance of OWLs.

“What you must remember,” said little Professor Flitwick squeakily perched as ever on a pile of

books so that he could see over the top of his desk, “is that these examinations may influence

your futures for many years to come! If you have not already given serious thought to your

careers, now is the time to do so. And in the meantime, I’m afraid, we shall be working harder

than ever to ensure that you all do yourselves justice!”

They then spent over an hour reviewing Summoning Charms, which according to Professor

Flitwick were bound to come up in their OWL, and he rounded off the lesson by setting them

their largest ever amount of Charms homework.

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

“You cannot pass an OWL,” said Professor McGonagall grimly, “without serious application,

practice and study. I see no reason why everybody in this class should not achieve an OWL in

Transfiguration as long as they put in the work.” Neville made a sad little disbelieving noise.

“Yes, you too, Longbottom,” said Professor McGonagall. “There’s nothing wrong with your work except lack of confidence. So… today we are starting Vanishing Spells. These are easier than Conjuring Spells, which you would not usually attempt until NEWT level, but they are still

among the most difficult magic you will be tested on in your OWL.”

She was quite right; Harry found the Vanishing Spells horribly difficult. By the end of a double

period neither he nor Ron had managed to vanish the snails on which they were practicing,

though Ron said hopefully he thought his looked a bit paler. Hermione, on the other hand,

successfully vanished her snail on the third attempt, earning her a ten-point bonus for Gryffindor

from Professor McGonagall. She was the only person not given homework; everybody else was

told to practice the spell overnight, ready for a fresh attempt on their snails the following

afternoon.

Now panicking slightly about the amount of homework they had to do, Harry and Ron spent

their lunch hour in the library looking up the uses of moonstones in potion-making. Still angry

about Ron’s slur on her woolly hats, Hermione did not join them. By the time they reached Care

of Magical Creatures in the afternoon, Harry’s head was aching again.

The day had become cool and breezy, and as they walked down the sloping lawn towards

Hagrid’s cabin on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, they felt the occasional drop of rain on their

faces. Professor Grubbly-Plank stood waiting for the class some ten yards from Hagrid’s front

door, a long trestle table in front of her laden with twigs. As Harry and Ron reached her, a loud

shout of laughter sounded behind them; turning, they saw Draco Malfoy striding towards them,

surrounded by his usual gang of Slytherin cronies. He had clearly just said something highly

amusing, because Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy Parkinson and the rest continued to snigger heartily as

they gathered around the trestle table and, judging by the way they all kept looking over at

Harry, he was able to guess the subject of the joke without too much difficulty.

“Everyone here?” barked Professor Grubbly-Plank, once all the Slytherins and Gryffindors had

arrived. “Let’s crack on then. Who can tell me what these things are called?”

She indicated the heap of twigs in front of her. Hermione’s hand shot into the air. Behind her

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

question. Pansy Parkinson gave a shriek of laughter that turned almost at once into a scream, as

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

“Oooooh!” said Parvati and Lavender, thoroughly irritating Harry. Anyone would have thought

Hagrid had never shown them impressive creatures; admittedly, the Flobberworms had been a bit

dull, but the Salamanders and Hippogriffs had been interesting enough, and the Blast-Ended

Skrewts perhaps too much so.

“Kindly keep your voices down, girls!” said Professor Grubbly-Plank sharply, scattering a

handful of what looked like brown rice among the stick-creatures, who immediately fell upon the

food. “So - anyone know the names of these creatures? Miss Granger?”

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

“Five points for Gryffindor,” said Professor Grubbly-Plank. “Yes, these are Bowtruckles, and as

Miss Granger rightly says, they generally live in trees whose wood is of wand quality. Anybody

know what they eat?”

“Woodlice,” said Hermione promptly which explained why what Harry had taken to be grains of

brown rice were moving. “But fairy eggs if they can get them.”

“Good girl, take another five points. So, whenever you need leaves or wood from a tree in which

a Bowtruckle lodges, it is wise to have a gift of woodlice ready to distract or placate it. They may

not look dangerous, but if angered they will try to gouge at human eyes with their fingers, which,

as you can see, are very sharp and not at all desirable near the eyeballs. So if you’d like to gather

closer, take a few woodlice and a Bowtruckle - I have enough here for one between three - you

can study them more closely. I want a sketch from each of you with all body-parts labeled by

the end of the lesson.”

The class surged forwards around the trestle table. Harry deliberately circled around the back so

that he ended up right next to Professor Grubbly-Plank.

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

“Never you mind,” said Professor Grubbly-Plank repressively, which had been her attitude last

time Hagrid had failed to turn up for a class, too. Smirking all over his pointed face, Draco

Malfoy leaned across Harry and seized the largest Bowtruckle.

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

got himself badly injured.”

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

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

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

know something? His father was a Death Eater after all; what if he had information about

Hagrid’s fate that had not yet reached the ears of the Order? He hurried back around the table to

Ron and Hermione who were squatting on the grass some distance away and attempting to

persuade a Bowtruckle to remain still long enough for them to draw it. Harry pulled out

parchment and quill, crouched down beside the others and related in a whisper what Malfoy had

just said.

“Dumbledore would know if some thing had happened to Hagrid,” said Hermione at once. “It’s

just playing into Malfoy’s hands to look worried; it tells him we don’t know exactly what’s

going on. We’ve got to ignore him, Harry. Here, hold the Bowtruckle for a moment, just so I can

draw its face…”

“Yes,” came Malfoy’s clear drawl from the group nearest them, “Father was talking to the

Minister just a couple of days ago, you know, and it sounds as though the Ministry’s really

determined to crack down on sub-standard teaching in this place. So even if that overgrown

moron does show up again, he’ll probably be sent packing straightaway.”

“OUCH!”

Harry had gripped the Bowtruckle so hard that it had almost snapped, and it had just taken a

great retaliatory swipe at his hand with its sharp fingers, leaving two long deep cuts there. Harry

dropped it. Crabbe and Goyle, who had already been guffawing at the idea of Hagrid being

sacked, laughed still harder as the Bowtruckle set off at full tilt towards the Forest, a little

moving stick-man soon swallowed up among the tree roots. When the bell echoed distantly over

the grounds, Harry rolled up his blood-stained Bowtruckle picture and marched off to Herbology

with his hand wrapped in Hermione’s handkerchief, and Malfoy’s derisive laughter still ringing

in his ears.

“If he calls Hagrid a moron one more time…” said Harry through gritted teeth.

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

difficult for you…”

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

but Hermione frowned. Together, they traipsed across the vegetable patch. The sky still appeared

unable to make up its mind whether it wanted to rain or not.

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

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

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

“Because she’ll never be as good as Hagrid,” said Harry firmly, fully aware that he had just

experienced an exemplary Care of Magical Creatures lesson and was thoroughly annoyed about

it.

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

Ginny.

“Hi,” she said brightly as she passed. A few seconds later, Luna Lovegood emerged, trailing

behind the rest of the class, a smudge of earth on her nose, and her hair tied in a knot on the top

of her head. When she saw Harry, her prominent eyes seemed to bulge excitedly and she made a

beeline straight for him. Many of his classmates turned curiously to watch. Luna took a great

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

“Er - right,” said Harry awkwardly. Luna was wearing what looked like a pair of orange radishes

for earrings, a fact that Parvati and Lavender seemed to have noticed, as they were both giggling

and pointing at her earlobes.

“You can laugh,” Luna said, her voice rising, apparently under the impression that Parvati and

Lavender were laughing at what she had said rather than what she was wearing, “but people used

to believe there were no such things as the Blibbering Humdinger or the Crumple-Horned

Snorkack!”

“Well, they were right, weren’t they?’ said Hermione impatiently. “There weren’t any such things as the Blibbering Humdinger or the Crumple-Horned Snorkack.”

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

Lavender were not the only ones hooting with laughter now.

“D’you mind not offending the only people who believe me?” Harry asked Hermione as they

made their way into class.

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

about her; apparently, she’ll only believe in things as long as there’s no proof at all. Well, I

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

Harry thought of the sinister winged horses he had seen on the night he had arrived and how

Luna had said she could see them too. His spirits sank slightly. Had she been lying? But before

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

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

support you. I personally believe you one hundred percent. My family have always stood firm

behind Dumbledore, and so do I.”

“Er - thanks very much, Ernie,” said Harry, taken aback but pleased. Ernie might be pompous on

occasions like this, but Harry was in a mood to deeply appreciate a vote of confidence from

somebody who did not have radishes dangling from their ears. Ernie’s words had certainly wiped

the smile from Lavender Brown’s face and as he turned to talk to Ron and Hermione, Harry

caught Seamus’s expression, which looked both confused and defiant.

To nobody’s surprise, Professor Sprout started their lesson by lecturing them about the

importance of OWLs. Harry wished all the teachers would stop doing this; he was starting to get

an anxious, twisted feeling in his stomach every time he remembered how much homework he

had to do, a feeling that worsened dramatically when Professor Sprout gave them yet another

essay at the end of class. Tired and smelling strongly of dragon dung, Professor Sprout’s

preferred type of fertilizer, the Gryffindors trooped back up to the castle an hour and a half later,

none of them talking very much; it had been another long day.

As Harry was starving, and he had his first detention with Umbridge at five o’clock, he headed

straight for dinner without dropping off his bag in Gryffindor Tower so that he could bolt

something down before facing whatever she had in store for him. He had barely reached the

entrance of the Great Hall, however, when a loud and angry voice yelled, “Oy, Potter!”

“What now?” he muttered wearily, turning to face Angelina Johnson, who looked as though she

was in a towering temper.

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

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

“What?” said Harry. “Why… oh yeah, Keeper tryouts!”

“Now he remembers!” snarled Angelina. “Didn’t I tell you I wanted to do a tryout with the wholeteam, and find someone who fitted in with everyone! Didn’t I tell you I’d booked the Quidditch pitch specially? And now you’ve decided you’re not going to be there!”

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

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

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

She turned on her heel and stormed away.

“You know what?” Harry said to Ron and Hermione as they entered the Great Hall. “I think we’d better check with Puddlemere United whether Oliver Wood’s been killed during a training

session, because Angelina seems to be channeling his spirit.”

“What d’you reckon are the odds of Umbridge letting you off on Friday?” said Ron skeptically,

as they sat down at the Gryffindor table.

“Less than zero,” said Harry glumly, tipping lamb c hops on to his plate and starting to eat. “Better try, though, hadn’t I? I’ll offer to do two more detentions or something, I dunno…” He

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

You realize we’ve got to write three essays, practice Vanishing Spells for McGonagall, work out

a counter-charm for Flitwick, finish the Bowtruckle drawing and start that stupid dream diary for

Trelawney?”

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

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

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

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

At five to five Harry bade the other two goodbye and set off for Umbridge’s office on the third

floor. When he knocked on the door she called, “Come in,” in a sugary voice. He entered

cautiously, looking around.

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

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

himself. When Lupin had occupied it, it was likely you would meet some fascinating Dark

creature in a cage or tank if you came to call. In the impostor Moody’s days it had been packed

with various instruments and artifacts for the detection of wrong doing and concealment.

Now, however, it looked totally unrecognizable. The surfaces had all been draped in lacy covers

and cloths. There were several vases full of dried flowers, each one residing on its own doily,

and on one of the walls was a collection of ornamental plates, each decorated with a large

technicolor kitten wearing a different bow around its neck. These were so foul that Harry stared

at them, transfixed, until Professor Umbridge spoke again.

“Good evening, Mr. Potter.”

Harry started and looked around. He had not noticed her at first because she was wearing a

luridly flowered set of robes that blended only too well with the tablecloth on the desk behind

her.

“Evening, Professor Umbridge,” Harry said stiffly.

“Well, sit down,” she said, pointing towards a small table draped in lace beside which she had

drawn up a straight-backed chair. A piece of blank parchment lay on the table, apparently

waiting for him.

“Er,” said Harry, without moving. “Professor Umbridge. Er - before we start, I - I wanted to ask

you a… a favor.”

Her bulging eyes narrowed.

“Oh, yes?”

“Well, I’m… I’m in the Gryffindor Quidditch team. And I was supposed to be at the tryouts for

the new Keeper at five o’clock on Friday and I was - was wondering whether I could skip

detention that night and do it - do it another night… instead…”

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

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

particularly juicy fly. “Oh, no, no, no. This is your punishment for spreading evil, nasty,

attention-seeking stories, Mr. Potter, and punishments certainly cannot be adjusted to suit the

guilty one’s convenience. No, you will come here at five o’clock tomorrow, and the next day,

and on Friday too, and you will do your detentions as planned. I think it rather a good thing that

you are missing something you really want to do. It ought to reinforce the lesson I am trying to

teach you.”

Harry felt the blood surge to his head and heard a thumping noise in his ears. So he told ‘evil,

nasty, attention-seeking stones’, did he?

She was watching him with her head slightly to one side, still smiling widely, as though she

knew exactly what he was thinking and was waiting to see whether he would start shouting

again. With a massive effort, Harry looked away from her, dropped his schoolbag beside the

straight-backed chair and sat down.

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

we? Now, you are going to be doing some lines for me, Mr. Potter. No, not with your quill,” she

added, as Harry bent down to open his bag. “You’re going to be using a rather special one of

mine. Here you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

for marking. Harry raised the sharp black quill, then realized what was missing.

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

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

voice.

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

He let out a gasp of pain. The words had appeared on the parchment in what appeared to be

shining red ink. At the same time, the words had appeared on the back of Harrys right hand, cut

into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel - yet even as he stared at the shining cut, the skin

healed over again, leaving the place where it had been slightly redder than before but quite

smooth.

Harry looked round at Umbridge. She was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth stretched in a

smile.

“Yes?”

“Nothing,” said Harry quietly.

He looked back at the parchment, placed the quill on it once more, wrote I must not tell lies, and

felt the searing pain on the back of his hand for a second time; once again, the words had been

cut into his skin; once again, they healed over seconds later.

And on it went. Again and again Harry wrote the words on the parchment in what he soon came

to realize was not ink, but his own blood. And, again and again, the words were cut into the back

of his hand, healed, and reappeared the next time he set quill to parchment.

Darkness fell outside Umbridge’s window. Harry did not ask when he would be allowed to stop.

He did not even check his watch. He knew she was watching him for signs of weakness and he

was not going to show any, not even if he had to sit there all night, cutting open his own hand

with this quill…

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

He stood up. His hand was stinging painfully. When he looked down at it he saw that the cut had

healed, but that the skin there was red raw.

“Hand,” she said.

He extended it. She took it in her own. Harry repressed a shudder as she touched him with her

thick, stubby fingers on which she wore a number of ugly old rings.

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

just have to try again tomorrow evening, won’t we? You may go.”

Harry left her office without a word. The school was quite deserted; it was surely past midnight.

He walked slowly up the corridor, then, when he had turned the corner and was sure she would

not hear him, broke into a run.

He had not had time to practice Vanishing Spells, had not written a single dream in his dream

diary and had not finished the drawing of the Bowtruckle, nor had he written his essays. He

skipped breakfast next morning to scribble down a couple of made-up dreams for Divination,

their first lesson, and was surprised to find a disheveled Ron keeping him company.

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

room for inspiration. Ron, who had been fast asleep when Harry got back to the dormitory,

muttered something about “doing other stuff”, bent low over his parchment and scrawled a few

words.

“That’ll have to do,” he said, slamming the diary shut. “I’ve said I dreamed I was buying a new

pair of shoes, she can’t make anything weird out of that, can she?”

They hurried off to North Tower together.

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

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

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

“Nope,” said Harry.

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

“No,” said Harry.

Ron groaned sympathetically.

It was another bad day for Harry; he was one of the worst in Transfiguration, not having

practiced Vanishing Spells at all. He had to give up his lunch hour to complete the picture of the

Bowtruckle and, meanwhile, Professors McGonagall, Grubbly-Plank and Sinistra gave them yet

more homework, which he had no prospect of finishing that evening because of his second

detention with Umbridge. To cap it all, Angelina Johnson tracked him down at dinner again and,

on learning that he would not be able to attend Friday’s Keeper tryouts, told him she was not at

all impressed by his attitude and that she expected players who wished to remain on the team to

put training before their other commitments.

“I’m in detention!” Harry yelled after her as she s talked away. “D’you think I’d rather be stuck in a room with that old toad or playing Quidditch?”

“At least it’s only lines,” said Hermione consolingly, as Harry sank back on to his bench and

looked down at his steak and kidney pie, which he no longer fancied very much. “It’s not as if

it’s a dreadful punishment, really…”

Harry opened his mouth, closed it again and nodded. He was not really sure why he was not

telling Ron and Hermione exactly what was happening in Umbridge’s room: he only knew that

he did not want to see their looks of horror; that would make the whole thing seem worse and

therefore more difficult to face. He also felt dimly that this was between himself and Umbridge,

a private battle of wills, and he was not going to give her the satisfaction of hearing that he had

complained about it.

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

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

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

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

The second detention was just as bad as the previous one. The skin on the back of Harry’s hand

became irritated more quickly now and was soon red and inflamed. Harry thought it unlikely that

it would keep healing as effectively for long. Soon the cut would remain etched into his hand and

Umbridge would, perhaps, be satisfied. He let no gasp of pain escape him, however, and from

the moment of entering the room to the moment of his dismissal, again past midnight, he said

nothing but “good evening” and “goodnight.”

His homework situation, however, was now desperate, and when he returned to the Gryffindor

common room he did not, though exhausted, go to bed, but opened his books and began Snape’s

moonstone essay. It was half past two by the time he had finished it. He knew he had done a poor

job, but there was no help for it; unless he had something to give in he would be in detention

with Snape next. He then dashed off answers to the questions Professor McGonagall had set

them, cobbled together something on the proper handling of Bowtruckles for Professor Grubbly-

Plank, and staggered up to bed, where he fell fully clothed on top of the covers and fell asleep

immediately.

Thursday passed in a haze of tiredness. Ron seemed very sleepy too, though Harry could not see

why he should be. Harry’s third detention passed in the same way as the previous two, except

that after two hours the words I must not tell lies did not fade from the back of Harrys hand, but

remained scratched there, oozing droplets of blood. The pause in the pointed quill’s scratching

made Professor Umbridge look up.

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

serve as a reminder to you, oughtn’t it? You may leave for tonight.”

“Do I still have to come back tomorrow?” said Harry picking up his schoolbag with his left hand

rather than his smarting right one.

“Oh yes,” said Professor Umbridge, smiling as widely as before. “Yes, I think we can etch the

message a little deeper with another evening’s work.”

Harry had never before considered the possibility that there might be another teacher in the

world he hated more than Snape, but as he walked back towards Gryffindor Tower he had to

admit he had found a strong contender. She’s evil, he thought, as he climbed a staircase to the

seventh floor, she’s an evil, twisted, mad old-

“Ron?”

He had reached the top of the stairs, turned right and almost walked into Ron, who was lurking

behind a statue of Lachlan the Lanky, clutching his broomstick. He gave a great leap of surprise

when he saw Harry and attempted to hide his new Cleansweep Eleven behind his back.

“What are you doing?”

“Er - nothing. What are you doing?”

Harry frowned at him.

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

“I’m - I’m hiding from Fred and George, if you must know,” said Ron. “They just went past with a bunch of first-years, I bet they’re testing stuff on them again. I mean, they can’t do it in the

common room now, can they, not with Hermione there.”

He was talking in a very fast, feverish way.

“But what have you got your broom for, you haven’t been flying, have you?” Harry asked.

“I - well - well, okay, I’ll tell you, but don’t laugh, all right?” Ron said defensively, turning redder with every second. “I - I thought I’d try out for Gryffindor Keeper now I’ve got a decent broom. There. Go on. Laugh.”

“I’m not laughing,” said Harry. Ron blinked. “It’s a brilliant idea! It’d be really cool if you got on the team! I’ve never seen you play Keeper, are you good?”

“I’m not bad,” said Ron, who looked immensely relieved at Harry’s reaction. “Charlie, Fred and

George always made me Keep for them when they were training during the holidays.”

“So you’ve been practicing tonight?”

“Every evening since Tuesday… just on my own, though. I’ve been trying to bewitch Quaffles to

fly at me, but it hasn’t been easy and I don’t know how much use it’ll be.” Ron looked nervous

and anxious. “Fred and George are going to laugh themselves stupid when I turn up for the

tryouts. They haven’t stopped taking the mickey out of me since I got made a prefect.”

“I wish I was going to be there,” said Harry bitterly, as they set off together towards the common

room.

“Yeah, so do - Harry, what’s that on the back of your hand?”

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

success as Ron with his Cleansweep.

“It’s just a cut - it’s nothing - it’s -”

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

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

sick, he released Harry.

“I thought you said she was just giving you lines?”

Harry hesitated, but after all, Ron had been honest with him, so he told Ron the truth about the

hours he had been spending in Umbridge’s office.

“The old hag!” Ron said in a revolted whisper as they came to a halt in front of the Fat Lady, who was dozing peacefully with her head against her frame. “She’s sick! Go to McGonagall, say

something!”

“No,” said Harry at once. “I’m not giving her the satisfaction of knowing she’s got to me.”

“Got to you? You can’t let her get away with this!”

“I don’t know how much power McGonagall’s got over her,” said Harry.

“Dumbledore, then, tell Dumbledore!”

“No,” said Harry flatly.

“Why not?”

“He’s got enough on his mind,” said Harry, but that was not the true reason. He was not going to

go to Dumbledore for help when Dumbledore had not spoken to him once since June.

“Well, I reckon you should -” Ron began, but he was interrupted by the Fat Lady, who had been

watching them sleepily and now burst out, “Are you going to give me the password or will I have to stay awake all night waiting for you to finish your conversation?”

Friday dawned sullen and sodden as the rest of the week. Though Harry automatically glanced

towards the staff table when he entered the Great Hall, it was without any real hope of seeing

Hagrid, and he turned his mind immediately to his more pressing problems, such as the

mountainous pile of homework he had to do and the prospect of yet another detention with

Umbridge.

Two things sustained Harry that day. One was the thought that it was almost the weekend; the

other was that, dreadful though his final detention with Umbridge was sure to be, he had a distant

view of the Quidditch pitch from her window and might, with luck, be able to see something of

Ron’s tryout. These were rather feeble rays of light, it was true, but Harry was grateful for

anything that might lighten his present darkness; he had never had a worse first week of term at

Hogwarts.

At five o’clock that evening he knocked on Professor Umbridge’s office door for what he

sincerely hoped would be the final time, and was told to enter. The blank parchment lay ready

for him on the lace-covered table, the pointed black quill beside it.

“You know what to do, Mr. Potter,” said Umbridge, smiling sweetly at him.

Harry picked up the quill and glanced through the window. If he just shifted his chair an inch or

so to the right… on the pretext of shifting himself closer to the table, he managed it. He now had

a distant view of the Gryffindor Quidditch team soaring up and down the pitch, while half a

dozen black figures stood at the foot of the three high goalposts, apparently awaiting their turn to

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

I must not tell lies, Harry wrote. The cut in the back of his right hand opened and began to bleed afresh.
I must not tell lies. The cut dug deeper, stinging and smarting.
I must not tell lies. Blood trickled down his wrist.
He chanced another glance out of the window. Whoever was defending the goalposts now was
doing a very poor job indeed. Katie Bell scored twice in the few seconds Harry dared to watch.
Hoping very much that the Keeper wasn’t Ron, he dropped his eyes back to the parchment
shining with blood.
I must not tell lies.
I must not tell lies.
He looked up whenever he thought he could risk it; when he could hear the scratching of
Umbridges quill or the opening of a desk drawer. The third person to try out was pretty good, the
fourth was terrible, the fifth dodged a Bludger exceptionally well but then fumbled an easy save.
The sky was darkening, and Harry doubted he would be able to see the sixth and seventh people
at all.

I must not tell lies.
I must not tell lies.
The parchment was now dotted with drops of blood from the back of his hand, which was
searing with pain. When he next looked up, night had fallen and the Quidditch pitch was no
longer visible.
“Let’s see if you’ve gotten the message yet, shall we?” said Umbridges soft voice half an hour later. She moved towards him, stretching out her short ringed fingers for his arm. And then, as she took hold of him to examine the words now cut into his skin, pain seared, not across the back of his hand, but across the scar on his forehead. At the same time, he had a most peculiar sensation somewhere around his midriff.
He wrenched his arm out of her grip and leapt to his feet, staring at her. She looked back at him,
a smile stretching her wide, slack mouth.
“Yes, it hurts, doesn’t it?” she said softly.
He did not answer. His heart was thumping very hard and fast. Was she talking about his hand or
did she know what he had just felt in his forehead?
“Well, I think I’ve made my point, Mr. Potter. You may go.”
He caught up his schoolbag and left the room as quickly as he could.
Stay calm, he told himself, as he sprinted up the stairs. Stay calm, it doesn’t necessarily mean
what you think it means…
“Mimbulus mimbletonia!” he gasped at the Fat Lady, who swung forwards once more.
A roar of sound greeted him. Ron came running towards him, beaming all over his face and
slopping Butterbeer down his front from the goblet he was clutching.
“Harry, I did it, I’m in, I’m Keeper!”
“What? Oh - brilliant!” said Harry, trying to smile naturally, while his heart continued to race and his hand throbbed and bled.
“Have a Butterbeer.” Ron pressed a bottle on him. “I can’t believe it - where’s Hermione gone?”
“She’s there,” said Fred, who was also swigging Butterbeer, and pointed to an armchair by the
fire. Hermione was dozing in it, her drink tipping precariously in her hand.
“Well, she said she was pleased when I told her,” said Ron, looking slightly put out.
“Let her sleep,” said George hastily. It was a few moments before Harry noticed that several of
the first-years gathered around them bore unmistakable signs of recent nosebleeds.
“Come here, Ron, and see if Oliver’s old robes fit you,” called Katie Bell, “we can take off his
name and put yours on instead…”
As Ron moved away, Angelina came striding up to Harry.
“Sorry I was a bit short with you earlier, Potter,” she said abruptly. “It’s stressful this managing
lark, you know, I’m starting to think I was a bit hard on Wood sometimes.” She was watching
Ron over the rim of her goblet with a slight frown on her face.
“Look, I know he’s your best mate, but he’s not fabulous,” she said bluntly. “I think with a bit of
training he’ll be all right, though. He comes from a family of good Quidditch players. I’m
banking on him turning out to have a bit more talent than he showed today, to be honest. Vicky
Frobisher and Geoffrey Hooper both flew better this evening, but Hoopers a real whiner, he’s
always moaning about something or other, and Vicky’s involved in all sorts of societies. She
admitted herself that if training clashed with her Charms Club she’d put Charms first. Anyway,
we’re having a practice session at two o’clock tomorrow, so just make sure you’re there this
time. And do me a favor and help Ron as much as you can, okay?”
He nodded, and Angelina strolled back to Alicia Spinnet. Harry moved over to sit next to
Hermione, who awoke with a jerk as he put down his bag.
“Oh, Harry, it’s you… good about Ron, isn’t it?” she said blearily. “I’m just so-so - so tired,” she
yawned. “I was up until one o’clock making more hat s. They’re disappearing like mad!”
And sure enough, now that he looked, Harry saw that there were woolly hats concealed all
around the room where unwary elves might accidentally pick them up.
“Great,” said Harry distractedly; if he did not tell somebody soon, he would burst. “Listen,
Hermione, I was just up in Umbridge’s office and she touched my arm.”
Hermione listened closely. When Harry had finished, she said slowly “You’re worried You-
Know-Who’s controlling her like he controlled Quirrell?”
“Well,” said Harry, dropping his voice, “it’s a possibility, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said Hermione, though she sounded unconvinced. “But I don’t think he can
be possessing her the way he possessed Quirrell, I mean, he’s properly alive again now, isn’t he,
he’s got his own body, he wouldn’t need to share someone else’s. He could have her under the
Imperius Curse, I suppose…”
Harry watched Fred, George and Lee Jordan juggling empty Butterbeer bottles for a moment.
Then Hermione said, “But last year your scar hurt when nobody was touching you, and didn’t
Dumbledore say it had to do with what You-Know-Who was feeling at the time? I mean, maybe
this hasn’t got anything to do with Umbridge at all, maybe it’s just coincidence it happened
while you were with her?”
“She’s evil,” said Harry flatly. “Twisted.”
“She’s horrible, yes, but… Harry, I think you ought to tell Dumbledore your scar hurt.”
It was the second time in two days he had been advised to go to Dumbledore and his answer to
Hermione was just the same as his answer to Ron.
“I’m not bothering him with this. Like you just said, its not a big deal. It’s been hurting on and
off all summer - it was just a bit worse tonight, that’s all -”
“Harry, I’m sure Dumbledore would want to be bothered by this -”
“Yeah,” said Harry, before he could stop himself, “that’s the only bit of me Dumbledore cares
about, isn’t it, my scar?”
“Don’t say that, it’s not true!”
“I think I’ll write and tell Sirius about it, see what he thinks -”
“Harry, you can’t put something like that in a letter!” said Hermione, looking alarmed. “Don’t
you remember, Moody told us to be careful what we put in writing! We just can’t guarantee owls
aren’t being intercepted any more!”
“All right, all right, I won’t tell him, then!” said Harry irritably. He got to his feet. “I’m going to
bed. Tell Ron for me, will you?”
“Oh no,” said Hermione, looking relieved, “if you’re going that means I can go too, without being rude. I’m absolutely exhausted and I want to make some more hats tomorrow. Listen, you can help me if you like, it’s quite fun, I’m getting better, I can do patterns and bobbles and all sorts of things now.”
Harry looked into her face, which was shining with glee, and tried to look as though he was
vaguely tempted by this offer.
“Er… no, I don’t think I will, thanks,” he said. “Er- not tomorrow. I’ve got loads of homework to
do…”
And he traipsed off to the boys’ stairs, leaving her looking slightly disappointed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Percy and Padfoot
Harry was first to wake up in his dormitory next morning. He lay for a moment watching dust
swirl in the chink of sunlight coming through the gap in his four-posters hangings, and savored
the thought that it was Saturday. The first week of term seemed to have dragged on forever, like
one gigantic History of Magic lesson.
Judging by the sleepy silence and the freshly minted look of that beam of sunlight, it was just
after daybreak. He pulled open the curtains around his bed, got up and started to dress. The only
sound apart from the distant twittering of birds was the slow, deep breathing of his fellow
Gryffindors. He opened his schoolbag carefully, pulled out parchment and quill and headed out
of the dormitory for the common room.
Making straight for his favorite squashy old armchair beside the now extinct fire, Harry settled
himself down comfortably and unrolled his parchment while looking around the room. The
detritus of crumpled-up bits of parchment, old Gobstones, empty ingredient jars and 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 okay, the first week back here’s been terrible, I’m really glad it’s the weekend.
We’ve got a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Umbridge. She’s nearly as
nice as your mum. I’m writing because that thing I wrote to you about last summer happened
again last night when I was doing a detention with Umbridge.
We’re all missing our biggest friend, we hope he’ll be back soon.
Please write back quickly.
Best,
Harry
Harry reread 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.
Norris, 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 unmistakable air of a cat
that was off to report to her boss, yet Harry could not see why; he was perfectly entitled to walk
up to the Owlery on a Saturday morning.
The sun was high in the sky now and when Harry entered the Owlery the glassless windows
dazzled his eyes; thick silvery beams of sunlight crisscrossed the circular room in which
hundreds of owls nestled on rafters, a little restless in the early-morning light, some clearly just
returned from hunting. The straw-covered floor crunched a little as he stepped across tiny animal
bones, craning his neck for a sight of Hedwig.
“There you are,” he said, spotting her somewhere near the very top of the vaulted ceiling. “Get
down here, I’ve got a letter for you.”
With a low hoot she stretched her great white wings and soared down 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, okay?”
She blinked her amber eyes once and he took that to mean that she understood.
“Safe flight, then,” said Harry and he carried her to one of the windows; with a moment’s
pressure on his arm, Hedwig took off into the blindingly bright sky. He watched her until she
became a tiny black speck and vanished, then switched his gaze to Hagrid’s hut, clearly visible
from this window, and just as clearly uninhabited, the chimney smokeless, the curtains drawn.
The treetops of the Forbidden Forest swayed in a light breeze. Harry watched them, savoring
the fresh air on his face, thinking about Quidditch later… 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 disheveled; he had obviously run
here. Mrs. Norris came trotting at his heels, gazing up at the owls overhead and mewing hungrily.
There was a restless shifting of wings from above and a large brown owl snapped his beak in a
menacing fashion.
“Aha!’ said Filch, taking a flat-footed step toward s 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 Harrys 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, okay,” said Harry.
“Look, I don’t think you should,” said Hermione seriously. “You’re both really behind on
homework as it -”
But she broke off; the morning post was arriving and, as usual, the Daily Prophet was soaring
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 recognize Sirius on the platform…”
“What?” said Ron, looking alarmed. “You didn’t say -”
“Shh!” said the other two.
“… ‘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 Garden s, Clapham, has appeared in front of the
Wizengamot charged with trespass and attempted robbery at the Ministry of Magic on31st
August. Podmore was arrested by Ministry of Magic watchwizard Eric Munch, who found him
attempting to force his way through a top-security door at one o’clock in the morning. Podmore,
who refused to speak in his own defense, was convicted on both charges and sentenced to six
months in Azkaban.
“Sturgis Podmore?” said Ron slowly. “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 farfetched.
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-fertilizing 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 practice if we want to stay on
the Quidditch team…”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Ron, in a heartened tone. “And we have got plenty of time to do it all…”
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 practiced. 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.
“Okay, everyone,” said Angelina, entering from the Captain’s office, already changed. “Let’s get to it; Alicia and Fred, if you can just bring 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. “Okay,
everyone, we’re going to start with some passes just to warm up, the whole team please -”
“Hey, Johnson, what’s with that hairstyle, anyway?” shrieked Pansy Parkinson from below. “Why would anyone want to look like they’ve got worms coming out of their head?”
Angelina swept her long braided hair out of her face and 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 practicing with him this morning.”
“Yeah, well, I hope he hasn’t peaked too soon,” said Fred gloomily.
They returned to the air. When Angelina blew her whistle, Harry released the Snitch and Fred
and George let fly the Bludger. From that moment on, Harry was barely aware of what the others
were doing. It was his job to recapture the tiny fluttering golden ball that was worth a hundred
and fifty points to the Seeker’s team and doing so required enormous speed and skill. He
accelerated, rolling and swerving in and out of the Chasers, the warm autumn air whipping his
face, and the distant yells of the Slytherins so much meaningless roaring in his ears… but too
soon, the whistle brought him to a halt again.
“Stop - stop - STOP!” screamed Angelina. “Ron - you’re not covering your middle post!”
Harry looked 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
center position until you have to move to defend a hoop, or else circle the hoops, but don’t drift
vaguely off to one side, that’s how you let in the last three goals!”
“Sorry…” Ron repeated, his red face shining like a beacon against the bright blue sky.
“And Katie, can’t you do something about that nosebleed?”
“It’s just getting worse!” said Katie thickly, attempting to stem the flow with her sleeve.
Harry glanced 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 Angelina’s whistle sounded. Harry,
who had just sighted the Snitch circling the opposite goalpost, pulled up feeling distinctly
aggrieved.
“What now?” he said impatiently to Alicia, who was nearest.
“Katie,” she said shortly.
Harry turned and saw Angelina, Fred and George all flying as fast as they could 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 lo 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 criticize -”
“Ron -”
“I haven’t got time to listen to a sermon, all right, Hermione, I’m up to my neck in it here -”
“No - look!”
Hermione was pointing to the nearest window. Harry and Ron both looked over. A handsome
screech owl was standing on the windowsill, gazing into the room at Ron.
“Isn’t that Hermes?” said Hermione, sounding amazed.
“Blimey, it is!” said Ron quietly, throwing down his quill and getting to his feet. “What’s Percy
writing to me for?”
He crossed to the window and opened it; Hermes flew inside, landed 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, s inking 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 traveled, the
more pronounced became his scowl. When he had finished reading, he looked disgusted. He
thrust the letter at Harry and Hermione, who leaned 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 fraternization with that boy. Yes, I am sure you are
surprised to hear this - no doubt you will say that Potter has always been Dumbledore’s favorite
— but I feel bound to tell you that Dumbledore may not be in charge at Hogwarts much longer
and the people who count have a very different - and probably more accurate - view of Potter’s
behavior. I shall say no more here, but if you look at the Daily Prophet tomorrow you will get a
good idea of the way the wind is blowing — and see if you can spot yours truly!
Seriously, Ron, you do not want to be tarred with the same brush as Potter, it could be very
damaging to your future prospects, and I am talking here about life after school, too. As you
must be aware, given that our father escorted him to court, Potter had a disciplinary hearing this
summer in front of the whole Wizengamot and he did not come out of it looking too good. He
got off on a mere technicality, if you ask me, and many of the people I’ve spoken to remain
convinced of his guilt.
It may be that you are afraid to sever ties with Potter - I know that he can be unbalanced and, for
all I know, violent - but if you have any worries about this, or have spotted anything else in
Potter’s behavior that is troubling you, I urge you to speak to Dolores Umbridge, a 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 cooperation from staff as she strives to make those necessary changes within Hogwarts that the
Ministry so ardently desires (although she should find this easier from next week — again, see
the 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 criticize our
parents, but I am afraid I can no longer live under their roof while they remain mixed up with the
dangerous crowd around Dumbledore. (If you are writing to Mother at any point, you might tell
her that a certain Sturgis Podmore, who is a great friend of Dumbledore’s, has recently been sent to Azkaban for trespass at the Ministry. Perhaps that will open their eyes to the kind of petty
criminals with whom they are currently rubbing shoulders.) I count myself very lucky to have
escaped the stigma of association with such people - the Minister really could not be more
gracious to me — and I do hope, Ron, that you will not allow family ties to blind you to the
misguided nature of our parents’ beliefs and actions, either. I sincerely hope that, in time, they
will realize how mistaken they were and I shall, of course, be ready to accept a full apology when that day comes.
Please think over what I have said most carefully, particularly the bit about Harry Potter, and
congratulations again on becoming prefect.
Your brother,
Percy
Harry looked up at Ron.
“Well,” he said, trying to sound as though he found the whole thing a joke, “if you want to - er -
what is it?” - he checked Percy’s letter - “Oh yeah - ‘severe 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, 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 Percys 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…
“Okay, 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 okay except for this bit at the end, I think you must have misheard Professor Sinistra, Europa’s covered in ice, not mice -
Harry?”
Harry had slid off his chair 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
Harrys 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; h is 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 defense of Kreacher. “She’s not letting us use magic at all!”
“All we do is read the stupid textbook,” said Ron.
“Ah, well, that figures,” said Sirius. “Our information from inside the Ministry is that Fudge
doesn’t want you trained in combat.”
“Trained in combat!” repeated Harry incredulously. “What does he think we’re doing here,
forming some sort of wizard army?”
“That’s exactly what he thinks you’re doing,” said Sirius, “or, rather, that’s exactly what he’s
afraid Dumbledore’s doing - forming his own private army, with which he will be able to take on
the Ministry of Magic.”
There was a pause at this, then Ron said, “That’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard, including
all the stuff that Luna Lovegood comes out with.”
“So we’re being prevented from learning Defense Against the Dark Arts because Fudge is scared
we’ll use spells against the Ministry?” said Hermione, looking furious.
“Yep,” said Sirius. “Fudge thinks Dumbledore will stop at nothing to seize power. He’s getting
more paranoid about Dumbledore by the day. It’s a matter of time before he has Dumbledore
arrested on some trumped-up charge.”
This reminded Harry of Percy’s letter.
“D’you know if there’s going to be anything about Dumbledore in the Daily Prophet tomorrow?
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 okay.”
Unconvinced, Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged worried looks.
“Listen, don’t go asking too many questions about Hagrid,” said Sirius hastily, “it’ll just draw
even more attention to the fact that he’s not back and I know Dumbledore doesn’t want that.
Hagrid’s tough, he’ll be okay.” And when they did not appear cheered by this, Sirius added,
“When’s your next Hogsmeade weekend, anyway? I was thinking, we got away with the dog
disguise at the station, didn’t we? I thought I could —”
“NO!” said Harry and Hermione together, very loudly.
“Sirius, didn’t you see the Daily Prophet?” said Hermione anxiously.
“Oh, that,” said Sirius, grinning, “they’re always guessing where I am, they haven’t really got a
clue -”
“Yeah, but we think this time they have,’ said Harry. “Something Malfoy said on the train made
us think he knew it was you, and his father was on the platform, Sirius - you know, Lucius
Malfoy - so don’t come up here, whatever you do. If Malfoy recognizes you again -”
“All right, all right, I’ve got the point,” said Sirius. He looked most displeased. “Just an idea,
thought you might like to get together.”
“I would, I just don’t want you chucked back in Azkaban!” said Harry.
There was a pause in which Sirius looked out of the fire at Harry, a crease between his sunken
eyes.
“You’re less like your father than I thought,” he said finally, a definite coolness in his voice. “The risk would’ve been what made it fun for James.”
“Look -”
“Well, I’d better get going, I can hear Kreacher coming down the stairs,” said Sirius, but Harry
was sure he was lying. “I’ll write to tell you a time I can make it back into the fire, then, shall I? If you can stand to risk it?”
There was a tiny pop, and the place where Sirius’s head had been was flickering flame once
more.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Hogwarts High Inquisitor
They had expected to have to comb Hermione’s Daily Prophet carefully next morning to find the article Percy had mentioned in his letter. However, the departing delivery owl had barely cleared the top of the milk jug when Hermione let out a huge gasp and flattened the newspaper to reveal a large photograph of Dolores Umbridge, smiling widely and blinking slowly at them from beneath the headline.
MINISTRY SEEKS EDUCATIONAL REFORM
DOLORES UMBRIDGE APPOINTED
FIRST EVER HIGH INQUISITOR
“Umbridge – Inquisitor?” said Harry darkly, his half-eaten piece of toast slipping from his fingers. “What does that maen?” Hermione rad aloud:
“In a surprise move last night the Ministry of Magic passed new legislation giving itself an
unprecedented level of control at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
“‘The Minister has been growing uneasy about goings-on at Hogwarts for some time,’ said junior Assistant to the Minister, Percy Weasley. ‘He is now responding to concerns voiced by anxious parents, who feel the school may be moving in a direction they do not approve.’
“This is not the first time in recent weeks that the Minister, Cornelius Fudge, has used new laws
to effect improvements at the wizarding school. As recently as August 30th, Educational Decree
Number Twenty-two was passed, to ensure that, in the event of the current Headmaster being
unable to provide a candidate for a teaching post, the Ministry should select an appropriate
person. ‘That’s how Dolores Umbridge came to be appointed to the teaching staff at Hogwarts,’ said Weasley last night. ‘Dumboldore couldn’t find anyone so the Minister put in Umbridge, and of course, she’s been an immediate success —’”
“She’s been a WHAT?” said Harry loudly.
“Wait, there’s more,” said Hermione grimly.
“‘—an immediate success, totally revolutionizing the teaching of Defense Against the Dark Arts
and providing the Minister with on-the-ground feedback about what’s really happening at
Hogwarts.’
“It is this last function that the Ministry has now formalized with the passing of Educational
Decree Number Twenty-three, which creates the new position of Hogwarts High Inquisitor.
“‘This is an exciting new phase in the Minister’s plan to get to grips with what some are calling the falling standards at Hogwarts,’ said Weasley. ‘The Inquisitor will have powers to inspect her
fellow educators and make sure that they are coming up to scratch. Professor Umbridge has been offered this position in addition to her own teaching post and we are delighted to say that she has accepted.’
“The Ministry’s new moves have received enthusiastic support from parents of students at
Hogwarts.
‘I feel much easier in my mind now that I know Dumbledore is being subjected to fair and
objective evaluation,’ said Mr. Lucius Malfoy, 41, speaking from his Wiltshire mansion last
night. ‘Many of us with our children’s best interests at heart have been concerned about some of
Dumbledore’s eccentric decisions in the last few years and are glad to know that the Ministry is
keeping an eye on the situation.’
“Among those eccentric decisions are undoubtedly the controversial staff appointments previously described in this newspaper, which have included the employment of werewolf Remus Lupin, half-giant Rubeus Hagrid and delusional ex-Auror, ‘Mad - Eye’ Moody.
“Rumors abound, of course, that Albus Dumbledore, once Supreme Mugwump of the
International Confederation of Wizards and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, is no longer up
to the task of managing the prestigious school of Hogwarts
“‘I think the appointment of the Inquisitor is a first step towards ensuring that Hogwarts has a
headmaster in whom we can all repose our confidence,’ said a Ministry insider last night.
“Wizengamot elders Griselda Marchbanks and Tiberius Ogden have resigned in protest at the
introduction of the post of Inquisitor to Hogwarts.
“‘Hogwarts is a school, not an outpost of Cornelius Fudge’s office,’ said Madam Marchbanks. ‘This is a further disgusting attempt to discredit Albus Dumbledore.’
“(For a full account of Madam Marchbanks’s alleged links to subversive goblin groups, turn to
page seventeen.)”
Hermione finished reading and looked across the table at the other two.
“So now we know how we ended up with Umbridge! Fudge passed this Decree and forced her
on us! And now he’s given her the power to inspect the other teachers!” Hermione was breathing
fast and her eyes were very bright. “I can’t believe this. It’s outrageous!”
“I know it is,” said Harry. He looked down at his right hand, clenched on the table-top, and saw
the faint white outline of the words Umbridge had forced him to cut into his skin.
But a grin was unfurling on Ron’s face.
“What?” said Harry and Hermione together, staring at him.
“Oh, I can’t wait to see McGonagall inspected,” said Ron happily. “Umbridge won’t know what’s hit her.”
“Well, come on,” said Hermione, jumping up, “we’d better get going, if she’s inspecting Binns’s
class we don’t want to be late…”
But Professor Umbridge was not inspecting their History of Magic lesson, which was just as dull
as the previous Monday, nor was she in Snape’s dungeon when they arrived for double Potions,
where Harry’s moonstone essay was handed back to him with a large, spiky black ‘D’ scrawled
in an upper corner.
“I have awarded you the grades you would have received if you presented this work in your
OWL,” said Snape with a smirk, as he swept among them, passing back their homework. “This
should give you a realiztic idea of what to expect in the examination.”
Snape reached the front of the class and turned on his heel to face them.
“The general standard of this homework was abysmal. Most of you would have failed had this
been your examination. I expect to see a great deal more effort for this weeks essay on the
various varieties of venom antidotes, or I shall have to start handing out detentions to those
dunces who get a D.”
He smirked as Malfoy sniggered and said in a carrying whisper, “Some people got a D? Ha!”
Harry realized that Hermione was looking sideways to see what grade he had received; he slid
his moonstone essay back into his bag as quickly as possible, feeling that he would rather keep
that information private.
Determined not to give Snape an excuse to fail him this lesson, Harry read and reread every line
of instructions on the blackboard at least three times before acting on them. His Strengthening
Solution was not precisely the clear turquoise shade of Hermione’s but it was at least blue rather
than pink, like Neville’s, and he delivered a flask of it to Snape’s desk at the end of the lesson
with a feeling of mingled defiance and relief.
“Well, that wasn’t as bad as last week, was it?” said Hermione, as they climbed the steps out of
the dungeon and made their way across the Entrance Hall towards lunch. “And the homework
didn’t go too badly, either, did it?”
When neither Ron nor Harry answered, she pressed on, “I mean, all right, I didn’t expect the top
grade, not if he’s marking to OWL standard, but a pass is quite encouraging at this stage,
wouldn’t you say?”
Harry made a non-committal noise in his throat.
“Of course, a lot can happen between now and the exam, we’ve got plenty of time to improve,
but the grades we’re getting now are a sort of baseline, aren’t they? Something we can build
on…”
They sat down together at the Gryffindor table.
“Obviously, I’d have been thrilled if I’d got an O -”
“Hermione,” said Ron sharply “if you want to know what grades we got, ask.”
“I don’t - I didn’t mean - well, if you want to tell me -”
“I got a P,” said Ron, ladling soup into his bowl. “Happy?”
“Well, that’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Fred, who had just arrived at the table with George
and Lee Jordan and was sitting down on Harry’s right. “Nothing wrong with a good healthy P.”
“But,” said Hermione, “doesn’t P stand for…”
“Poor, yeah,” said Lee Jordan. “Still, better than D, isn’t it? ‘Dreadful’?”
Harry felt his face grow warm and faked a small coughing fit over his roll. When he emerged
from this he was sorry to find that Hermione was still in full flow about OWL grades.
“So top grade’s O for ‘Outstanding’,” she was saying, ‘and then there’s A-”
“No, E,” George corrected her, “E for ‘Exceeds Expectations’. And I’ve always thought Fred and I should’ve got E in everything, because we exceeded expectations just by turning up for the exams.”
They all laughed except Hermione, who ploughed on, “So, after E it’s A for ‘Acceptable’, and that’s the last pass grade, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” said Fred, dunking an entire roll in his soup, transferring it to his mouth and swallowing it whole.
“Then you get P for ‘Poor’-” Ron raised both his arms in mock celebration - “and D for ‘Dreadful’.”
“And then T,” George reminded him.
“T?” asked Hermione, looking appalled. “Even lower than a D? What on earth does that stand for?”
“Troll”, said George promptly.
Harry laughed again, though he was not sure whether or not George was joking. He imagined
trying to conceal from Hermione that he had received T’s in all his OWLs and immediately
resolved to work harder from now on.
“You lot had an inspected lesson yet?” Fred asked them.
“No,” said Hermione at once. “Have you?”
“Just now, before lunch,” said George. “Charms.”
“What was it like?” Harry and Hermione asked together.
Fred shrugged.
“Not that bad. Umbridge just lurked in the corner making notes on a clipboard. You know what
Flitwick’s like, he treated her like a guest, didn’t seem to bother him at all. She didn’t say much.
Asked Alicia a couple of questions about what the classes are normally like, Alicia told her they
were really good, that was it.”
“I can’t see old Flitwick getting marked down,” said George, “he usually gets everyone through
their exams all right.”
“Who’ve you got this afternoon?” Fred asked Harry.
“Trelawney -”
“A T if ever I saw one.”
“- and Umbridge herself.”
“Well, be a good boy and keep your temper with Umbridge today” said George. “Angelina’ll do
her nut if you miss any more Quidditch practices.”
But Harry did not have to wait for Defense Against the Dark Arts to meet Professor Umbridge.
He was pulling out his dream diary in a seat at the very back of the shadowy Divination room
when Ron elbowed him in the ribs and, looking round, he saw Professor Umbridge emerging
through the trapdoor in the floor. The class, which had been talking cheerily fell silent at once.
The abrupt fall in the noise level made Professor Trelawney, who had been wafting about
handing out copies of The Dream Oracle, look round.
“Good afternoon, Professor Trelawney,” said Professor Umbridge with her wide smile. “You
received my note, I trust? Giving the time and date of your inspection?”
Professor Trelawney nodded curtly and, looking very disgruntled, turned her back on Professor
Umbridge and continued to give out books. Still smiling, Professor Umbridge grasped the back
of the nearest armchair and pulled it to the front of the class so that it was a few inches behind
Professor Trelawneys seat. She then sat down, took her clipboard from her flowery bag and
looked up expectantly, waiting for the class to begin.
Professor Trelawney pulled her shawls tight about her with slightly trembling hands and
surveyed the class through her hugely magnifying lenses.
“We shall be continuing our study of prophetic dreams today,” she said in a brave attempt at her
usual mystic tones, though her voice shook slightly. “Divide into pairs, please, and interpret each
other’s latest night-time visions with the aid of the Oracle.”
She made as though to sweep back to her seat, saw Professor Umbridge sitting right beside it,
and immediately veered left towards Parvati and Lavender, who were already deep in discussion
about Parvati’s most recent dream.
Harry opened his copy of The Dream Oracle, watching Umbridge covertly. She was already
making notes on her clipboard. After a few minutes she got to her feet and began to pace the
room in Trelawney’s wake, listening to her conversations with students and posing questions
here and there. Harry bent his head hurriedly over his book.
“Think of a dream, quick,” he told Ron, “in case the old toad comes our way.”
“I did it last time,” Ron protested, “it’s your turn, you tell me one.”
“Oh, I dunno…” said Harry desperately, who could not remember dreaming anything at all over
the last few days. “Lets say I dreamed I was… drowning Snape in my cauldron. Yeah, that’ll
do…”
Ron chortled as he opened his Dream Oracle.
“Okay, we’ve got to add your age to the date you had the dream, the number of letters in the
subject… would that be ‘drowning’ or ‘cauldron’ or ‘Snape’?”
“It doesn’t matter, pick any of them,” said Harry, chancing a glance behind him. Professor
Umbridge was now standing at Professor Trelawneys shoulder making notes while the
Divination teacher questioned Neville about his dream diary.
“What night did you dream this again?” Ron said, immersed in calculations.
“I dunno, last night, whenever you like,” Harry told him, trying to listen to what Umbridge was
saying to Professor Trelawney. They were only a table away from him and Ron now. Professor
Umbridge was making another note on her clipboard and Professor Trelawney was looking
extremely put out.
“Now,” said Umbridge, looking up at Trelawney, “you’ve been in this post how long, exactly?”
Professor Trelawney scowled at her, arms crossed and shoulders hunched as though wishing to
protect herself as much as possible from the indignity of the inspection. After a slight pause in
which she seemed to decide that the question was not so offensive that she could reasonably
ignore it, she said in a deeply resentful tone, “Nearly sixteen years.”
“Quite a period,” said Professor Umbridge, making a note on her clipboard. “So it was Professor
Dumbledore who appointed you?”
“That’s right,” said Professor Trelawney shortly.
Professor Umbridge made another note.
“And you are a great-great-granddaughter of the celebrated Seer Cassandra Trelawney?”
“Yes,” said Professor Trelawney, holding her head a little higher.
Another note on the clipboard.
“But I think - correct me if I am mistaken - that you are the first in your family since Cassandra
to be possessed of Second Sight?”
“These things often skip - er - three generations,” said Professor Trelawney.
Professor Umbridge’s toadlike smile widened.
“Of course,” she said sweetly, making yet another note. “Well, if you could just predict
something for me, then?” And she looked up enquiringly, still smiling.
Professor Trelawney stiffened as though unable to believe her ears. “I don’t understand you,” she
said, clutching convulsively at the shawl around her scrawny neck.
“I’d like you to make a prediction for me,” said Professor Umbridge very clearly.
Harry and Ron were not the only people now watching and listening sneakily from behind their
books. Most of the class were staring transfixed at Professor Trelawney as she drew herself up to
her full height, her beads and bangles clinking.
“The Inner Eye does not See upon command!” she said in scandalized tones.
“I see,” said Professor Umbridge softly, making yet another note on her clipboard.
“I - but - but… wait!” said Professor Trelawney suddenly, in an attempt at her usual ethereal
voice, though the mystical effect was ruined somewhat by the way it was shaking with anger.
“I… I think I do see something… something that concerns you… why, I sense something…
something dark… some grave peril…”
Professor Trelawney pointed a shaking finger at Professor Umbridge who continued to smile
blandly at her, eyebrows raised.
“I am afraid… I am afraid that you are in grave danger!” Professor Trelawney finished
dramatically.
There was a pause. Professor Umbridge surveyed Professor Trelawney.
“Right,” she said softly, scribbling on her clipboard once more. “Well, if that’s really the best you can do…”
She turned away, leaving Professor Trelawney standing rooted to the spot, her chest heaving.
Harry caught Ron’s eye and knew that Ron was thinking exactly the same as he was: they both
knew that Professor Trelawney was an old fraud, but on the other hand, they loathed Umbridge
so much that they felt very much on Trelawneys side - until she swooped down on them a few
seconds later, that is.
“Well?” she said, snapping her long fingers under Harry’s nose, uncharacteristically brisk. “Let
me see the start you’ve made on your dream diary, please.”
And by the time she had interpreted Harrys dreams at the top of her voice (all of which, even the
ones that involved eating porridge, apparently foretold a gruesome and early death), he was
feeling much less sympathetic towards her. All the while, Professor Umbridge stood a few feet
away, making notes on that clipboard, and when the bell rang she descended the silver ladder
first and was waiting for them all when they reached their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson
ten minutes later.
She was humming and smiling to herself when they entered the room. Harry and Ron told
Hermione, who had been in Arithmancy, exactly what had happened in Divination while they all
took out their copies of Defensive Magical Theory, but before Hermione could ask any questions
Professor Umbridge had called them all to order and silence fell.
“Wands away” she instructed them all with a smile, and those people who had been hopeful
enough to take them out, sadly returned them to their bags. “As we finished Chapter One last
lesson, I would like you all to turn to page nineteen today and commence ‘Chapter Two,
Common Defensive Theories and their Derivation’. There will be no need to talk.”
Still smiling her wide, self-satisfied smile, she sat down at her desk. The class gave an audible
sigh as it turned, as one, to page nineteen. Harry wondered dully whether there were enough
chapters in the book to keep them reading through all this year’s lessons and was on the point of
checking the contents page when he noticed that Hermione had her hand in the air again.
Professor Umbridge had noticed, too, and what was more, she seemed to have worked out a
strategy for just such an eventuality. Instead of trying to pretend she had not noticed Hermione
she got to her feet and walked around the front row of desks until they were face to face, then she
bent down and whispered, so that the rest of the class could not hear, “What is it this time, Miss
Granger?”
“I’ve already read Chapter Two,” said Hermione.
“Well then, proceed to Chapter Three.”

“I’ve read that too. I’ve read the whole book.”
Professor Umbridge blinked but recovered her poise almost instantly.
“Well, then, you should be able to tell me what Slinkhard says about counter-jinxes in Chapter
Fifteen.”
“He says that counter-jinxes are improperly named,” said Hermione promptly. “He says - ‘jinx’ is just a name people give their jinxes when they want to make them sound more acceptable.”
Professor Umbridge raised her eyebrows and Harry knew she was impressed, against her will.
“But I disagree,” Hermione continued.
Professor Umbridge’s eyebrows rose a little higher and her gaze became distinctly colder.
“You disagree?” she repeated.
“Yes, I do,” said Hermione, who, unlike Umbridge, was not whispering, but speaking in a clear,
carrying voice that had by now attracted the attention of the rest of the class. “Mr. Slinkhard
doesn’t like jinxes, does he? But, I think they can be very useful when they’re used defensively.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” said Professor Umbridge, forgetting to whisper and straightening up. “Well, I’m afraid it is Mr. Slinkhard’s opinion, and not yours, that matters within this classroom,
Miss Granger.”
“But -” Hermione began.
“That is enough,” said Professor Umbridge. She walked back to the front of the class and stood
before them, all the jauntiness she had shown at the beginning of the lesson gone. “Miss Granger, I am going to take five points from Gryffindor house.”
There was an outbreak of muttering at this.
“What for?” said Harry angrily.
“Don’t you get involved!” Hermione whispered urgently to him.
“For disrupting my class with pointless interruptions,” said Professor Umbridge smoothly. “I am
here to teach you using a Ministry-approved method that does not include inviting students to
give their opinions on matters about which they understand very little. Your previous teachers in
this subject may have allowed you more license, but as none of them - with the possible
exception of Professor Quirrell, who did at least appear to have restricted himself to age appropriate subjects - would have passed a Ministry inspection -”
“Yeah, Quirrell was a great teacher,” said Harry loudly, “there was just that minor drawback of
him having Lord Voldemort sticking out of the back of his head.”
This pronouncement was followed by one of the loudest silences Harry had ever heard. Then -
“I think another week’s detentions would do you some good, Mr. Potter,” said Umbridge sleekly.
The cut on the back of Harry’s hand had barely healed and, by the following morning, it was
bleeding again. He did not complain during the evening’s detention; he was determined not to
give Umbridge the satisfaction; over and over again he wrote I must not tell lies and not a sound
escaped his lips, though the cut deepened with every letter.
The very worst part of this second week’s worth of detentions was, just as George had predicted,
Angelinas reaction. She cornered him just as he arrived at the Gryffindor table for breakfast on
Tuesday and shouted so loudly that Professor McGonagall came sweeping down upon the pair of
them from the staff table.
“Miss Johnson, how dare you make such a racket in the Great Hall! Five points from Gryffindor!”
“But Professor - he’s gone and landed himself in detention again -”
“What’s this, Potter?” said Professor McGonagall sharply, rounding on Harry. “Detention? From
whom?”
“From Professor Umbridge,” muttered Harry, not meeting Professor McGonagalls beady, square-framed eyes.
“Are you telling me,” she said, lowering her voice so that the group of curious Ravenclaws
behind them could not hear, “that after the warning I gave you last Monday you lost your temper
in Professor Umbridge’s class again?”
“Yes,” Harry muttered, speaking to the floor.
“Potter, you must get a grip on yourself! You are heading for serious trouble! Another five points
from Gryffindor!”
“But - what -? Professor, no!” Harry said, furious at this injustice, “I’m already being punished
by her, why do you have to take points as well?”
“Because detentions do not appear to have any effect on you whatsoever!” said Professor
McGonagall tartly. “No, not another word of complaint, Potter! And as for you, Miss Johnson,
you will confine your shouting matches to the Quidditch pitch in future or risk losing the team
captaincy!”
Professor McGonagall strode back towards the staff table. Angelina gave Harry a look of deepest
disgust and stalked away, upon which he flung himself on to the bench beside Ron, fuming.
“She’s taken points off Gryffindor because I’m having my hand sliced open every night! How is
that fair, how?”
“I know, mate,” said Ron sympathetically, tipping bacon on to Harry’s plate, “she’s bang out of
order.”
Hermione, however, merely rustled the pages of her Daily Prophet and said nothing.
“You think McGonagall was right, do you?” said Harry angrily to the picture of Cornelius Fudge
obscuring Hermione’s face.
“I wish she hadn’t taken points from you, but I think she’s right to warn you not to lose your
temper with Umbridge,” said Hermione’s voice, while Fudge gesticulated forcefully from the
front page, clearly giving some kind of speech.
Harry did not speak to Hermione all through Charms, but when they entered Transfiguration he
forgot about being cross with her. Professor Umbridge and her clipboard were sitting in a corner
and the sight of her drove the memory of breakfast right out of his head.
“Excellent,” whispered Ron, as they sat down in their usual seats. “Let’s see Umbridge get what
she deserves.”
Professor McGonagall marched into the room without giving the slightest indication that she
knew Professor Umbridge was there.
“That will do,” she said and silence fell immediately. “Mr. Finnigan, kindly come here and hand back the homework - Miss Brown, please take this box of mice - don’t be silly, girl, they won’t hurt you - and hand one to each student -”
“Hem, hem,” said Professor Umbridge, employing the same silly little cough she had used to
interrupt Dumbledore on the first night of term. Professor McGonagall ignored her. Seamus
handed back Harry’s essay; Harry took it without looking at him and saw, to his relief, that he
had managed an A.
“Right then, everyone, listen closely - Dean Thomas, if you do that to the mouse again I shall put
you in detention - most of you have now successfully Vanished your snails and even those who
were left with a certain amount of shell have got the gist of the spell. Today, we shall be -”
“Hem, hem,” said Professor Umbridge.
“Yes?” said Professor McGonagall, turning round, her eyebrows so close together they seemed to form one long, severe line.
“I was just wondering, Professor, whether you received my note telling you of the date and time
of your inspec—”
“Obviously I received it, or I would have asked you what you are doing in my classroom,” said
Professor McGonagall, turning her back firmly on Professor Umbridge. Many of the students
exchanged looks of glee. “As I was saying: today, we shall be practicing the altogether more
difficult Vanishment of mice. Now, the Vanishing Spell -”
“Hem, hem.”
“I wonder,” said Professor McGonagall in cold fury, turning on Professor Umbridge, “how you
expect to gain an idea of my usual teaching methods if you continue to interrupt me? You see, I
do not generally permit people to talk when I am talking.”
Professor Umbridge looked as though she had just been slapped in the face. She did not speak,
but straightened the parchment on her clipboard and began scribbling furiously.
Looking supremely unconcerned, Professor McGonagall addressed the class once more.
“As I was saying: the Vanishing Spell becomes more difficult with the complexity of the animal
to be Vanished. The snail, as an invertebrate, does not present much of a challenge; the mouse,
as a mammal, offers a much greater one. This is not, therefore, magic you can accomplish with
your mind on your dinner. So - you know the incantation, let me see what you can do…”
“How she can lecture me about not losing my temper with Umbridge!” Harry muttered to Ron
under his breath, but he was grinning - his anger with Professor McGonagall had quite
evaporated.
Professor Umbridge did not follow Professor McGonagall around the class as she had followed
Professor Trelawney; perhaps she realized Professor McGonagall would not permit it. She did,
however, take many more notes while sitting in her corner, and when Professor McGonagall
finally told them all to pack away, she rose with a grim expression on her face.
“Well, it’s a start,” said Ron, holding up a long wriggling mouse-tail and dropping it back into the box Lavender was passing around.
As they filed out of the classroom, Harry saw Professor Umbridge approach the teacher’s desk;
he nudged Ron, who nudged Hermione in turn, and the three of them deliberately fell back to
eavesdrop.
“How long have you been teaching at Hogwarts?” Professor Umbridge asked.
“Thirty-nine years this December,” said Professor McGonagall brusquely, snapping her bag shut.
Professor Umbridge made a note.
“Very well,” she said, “you will receive the results of your inspection in ten days’ time.”
“I can hardly wait,” said Professor McGonagall, in a coldly indifferent voice, and she strode off
towards the door. “Hurry up, you three,” she added, sweeping Harry, Ron and Hermione before
her.
Harry could not help giving her a faint smile and could have sworn he received one in return.
He had thought that the next time he would see Umbridge would be in his detention that evening,
but he was wrong. When they walked down the lawns towards the Forest for Care of Magical
Creatures, they found her and her clipboard waiting for them beside Professor Grubbly-Plank.
“You do not usually take this class, is that correct?” Harry heard her ask as they arrived at the
trestle table where the group of captive Bowtruckles were scrabbling around for woodlice like so
many living twigs.
“Quite correct,” said Professor Grubbly-Plank, hands behind her back and bouncing on the balls
of her feet. “I am a substitute teacher standing in for Professor Hagrid.”
Harry exchanged uneasy looks with Ron and Hermione. Malfoy was whispering with Crabbe and
Goyle; he would surely love this opportunity to tell tales on Hagrid to a member of the Ministry.
“Hmm,” said Professor Umbridge, dropping her voice, though Harry could still hear her quite
clearly. “I wonder - the Headmaster seems strangely reluctant to give me any information on the
matter - can you tell me what is causing Professor Hagrid’s very extended leave of absence?”
Harry saw Malfoy look up eagerly and watch Umbridge and Grubbly-Plank closely.
“Fraid I can’t,” said Professor Grubbly-Plank breezily. “Don’t know anything more about it than
you do. Got an owl from Dumbledore, would I like a couple of weeks’ teaching work. I
accepted. That’s as much as I know. Well… shall I get started then?”
“Yes, please do,” said Professor Umbridge, scribbling on her clipboard.
Umbridge took a different tack in this class and wandered amongst the students, questioning
them on magical creatures. Most people were able to answer well and Harry’s spirits lifted
somewhat; at least the class was not letting Hagrid down.
“Overall,” said Professor Umbridge, returning to Professor Grubbly-Plank’s side after a lengthy
interrogation of Dean Thomas, “how do you, as a temporary member of staff- an objective
outsider, I suppose you might say — how do you find Hogwarts? Do you feel you receive
enough support from the school management?”
“Oh, yes, Dumbledore’s excellent,” said Professor Grubbly-Plank heartily. “Yes, I’m very happy
with the way things are run, very happy indeed.”
Looking politely incredulous, Umbridge made a tiny note on her clipboard and went on, “And
what are you planning to cover with this class this year - assuming, of course, that Professor
Hagrid does not return?”
“Oh, I’ll take them through the creatures that most often come up in OWL,” said Professor
Grubbly-Plank. “Not much left to do - they’ve studied unicorns and Nifflers, I thought we’d
cover Porlocks and Kneazles, make sure they can recognize Crups and Knarls, you know…”
“Well, you seem to know what you’re doing, at any rate,” said Professor Umbridge, making a
very obvious tick on her clipboard. Harry did not like the emphasis she put on ‘you’ and liked it
even less when she put her next question to Goyle. “Now, I hear there have been injuries in this
class?”
Goyle gave a stupid grin. Malfoy hastened to answer the question.
“That was me,” he said. “I was slashed by a Hippogriff.”
“A Hippogriff?” said Professor Umbridge, now scribbling frantically.
“Only because he was too stupid to listen to what Hagrid told him to do,” said Harry angrily.
Both Ron and Hermione groaned. Professor Umbridge turned her head slowly in Harry’s
direction.
“Another nights detention, I think,” she said softly. “Well, thank you very much, Professor
Grubbly-Plank, I think that’s all I need here. You will be receiving the results of your inspection
within ten days.”
“Jolly good,” said Professor Grubbly-Plank, and Professor Umbridge set off back across the lawn to the castle.
It was nearly midnight when Harry left Umbridge’s office that night, his hand now bleeding so
severely that it was staining the scarf he had wrapped around it. He expected the common room
to be empty when he returned, but Ron and Hermione had sat up waiting for him. He was
pleased to see them, especially as Hermione was disposed to be sympathetic rather than critical.
“Here,” she said anxiously, pushing a small bowl of yellow liquid towards him, “soak your hand
in that, it’s a solution of strained and pickled Murtlap tentacles, it should help.”
Harry placed his bleeding, aching hand into the bowl and experienced a wonderful feeling of
relief. Crookshanks curled around his legs, purring loudly, then leapt into his lap and settled
down.
“Thanks,” he said gratefully, scratching behind Crookshanks’s ears with his left hand.
“I still reckon you should complain about this,” said Ron in a low voice.
“No,” said Harry flatly.
“McGonagall would go nuts if she knew —”
“Yeah, she probably would,” said Harry dully. “And how long do you reckon it’d take Umbridge
to pass another decree saying anyone who complains about the High Inquisitor gets sacked
immediately?”
Ron opened his mouth to retort but nothing came out and, after a moment, he closed it again,
defeated.
“She’s an awful woman,” said Hermione in a small voice. “Awful. You know, I was just saying
to Ron when you came in… we’ve got to do something about her.”
“I suggested poison,” said Ron grimly.
“No… I mean, something about what a dreadful teacher she is, and how we’re not going to learn
any Defense from her at all,” said Hermione.
“Well, what can we do about that?” said Ron, yawning. “It’s too late, isn’t it? She’s got the job,
she’s here to stay. Fudge’ll make sure of that.”
“Well,” said Hermione tentatively. “You know, I was thinking today…” she shot a slightly
nervous look at Harry and then plunged on, “I was thinking that - maybe the time’s come when
we should just - just do it ourselves.”
“Do what ourselves?” said Harry suspiciously, still floating his hand in the essence of Murtlap
tentacles.
“Well - learn Defense Against the Dark Arts ourselves,” said Hermione.
“Come off it,” groaned Ron. “You want us to do extra work? D’you realize Harry and I are
behind on homework again and it’s only the second week?”
“But this is much more important than homework!” said Hermione.
Harry and Ron goggled at her.
“I didn’t think there was anything in the universe more important than homework!” said Ron.
“Don’t be silly, of course there is,” said Hermione, and Harry saw, with an ominous feeling, that
her face was suddenly alight with the kind of fervour that SPEW usually inspired in her. “It’s
about preparing ourselves, like Harry said in Umbridge’s first lesson, for what’s waiting for us
out there. It’s about making sure we really can defend ourselves. If we don’t learn anything for a
whole year -”
“We can’t do much by ourselves,” said Ron in a defeated voice. “I mean, all right, we can go and
look jinxes up in the library and try and practice them, I suppose -”
“No, I agree, we’ve gone past the stage where we can just learn things out of books”‘ said
Hermione. “We need a teacher, a proper one, who can show us how to use the spells and correct
us if we’re going wrong.”
“If you’re talking about Lupin…” Harry began.
“No, no, I’m not talking about Lupin,” said Hermione. “He’s too busy with the Order and,
anyway, the most we could see him is during Hogsmeade weekends and that’s not nearly often
enough.”
“Who, then?” said Harry, frowning at her.
Hermione heaved a very deep sigh.
“Isn’t it obvious?” she said. “I’m talking about you, Harry.”
There was a moment’s silence. A light night breeze rattled the windowpanes behind Ron, and the
fire guttered.
“About me what?” said Harry.
“I’m talking about you teaching us Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
Harry stared at her. Then he turned to Ron, ready to exchange the exasperated looks they
sometimes shared when Hermione elaborated on far-fetched schemes like SPEW to Harrys
consternation, however, Ron did not look exasperated.
He was frowning slightly, apparently thinking. Then he said, “That’s an idea.”
“What’s an idea?” said Harry.
“You,” said Ron. “Teaching us to do it.”
“But…”
Harry was grinning now, sure the pair of them were pulling his leg.
“But I’m not a teacher, I can’t -”
“Harry, you’re the best in the year at Defense Against the Dark Arts,” said Hermione.
“Me?” said Harry, now grinning more broadly than ever. “No I’m not, you’ve beaten me in every test -”
“Actually, I haven’t,” said Hermione coolly. “You beat me in our third year - the only year we
both sat the test and had a teacher who actually knew the subject. But I’m not talking about test
results, Harry. Think what you’ve done!”
“How d’you mean?”
“You know what, I’m not sure I want someone this stupid teaching me,” Ron said to Hermione,
smirking slightly. He turned to Harry.
“Let’s think,” he said, pulling a face like Goyle concentrating. “Uh… first year - you saved the
Sorcerer’s Stone from You-Know-Who.”
“But that was luck,” said Harry, “it wasn’t skill.”
“Second year,” Ron interrupted, “you killed the Basilisk and destroyed Riddle.”
“Yeah, but if Fawkes hadn’t turned up, I -”
“Third year,” said Ron, louder still, “you fought off about a hundred Dementors at once -”
“You know that was a fluke, if the Time-Turner hadn’t -”
“Last year,” Ron said, almost shouting now, “you fought off You-Know-Who again-”
“Listen to me!” said Harry, almost angrily, because Ron and Hermione were both smirking now.
“Just listen to me, all right? It sounds great when you say it like that, but all that stuff was luck - I
didn’t know what I was doing half the time, I didn’t plan any of it, I just did whatever I could
think of, and I nearly always had help -”
Ron and Hermione were still smirking and Harry felt his temper rise; he wasn’t even sure why he
was feeling so angry.
“Don’t sit there grinning like you know better than I do, I was there, wasn’t I?” he said heatedly.
“I know what went on, all right? And I didn’t get through any of that because I was brilliant at
Defense Against the Dark Arts, I got through it all because - because help came at the right time,
or because I guessed right - but I just blundered through it all, I didn’t have a clue what I was
doing - STOP LAUGHING!”
The bowl of Murtlap essence fell to the floor and smashed. He became aware that he was on his
feet, though he couldn’t remember standing up. Crookshanks streaked away under a sofa. Ron
and Hermione’s smiles had vanished.
“You don’t know what it’s like! You - neither of you - you’ve never had to face him, have you?
You think it’s just memorizing a bunch of spells and throwing them at him, like you’re in class
or something? The whole time you’re sure you know there’s nothing between you and dying
except your own - your own brain or guts or whatever - like you can think straight when you
know you’re about a second from being murdered, or tortured, or watching your friends die
- they’ve never taught us that in their classes, what it’s like to deal with things like that - and you
two sit there acting like I’m a clever little boy to be standing here, alive, like Diggory was stupid,
like he messed up — you just don’t get it, that could just as easily have been me, it would have
been if Voldemort hadn’t needed me -”
“We weren’t saying anything like that, mate,” said Ron, looking aghast. “We weren’t having a go at Diggory, we didn’t - you’ve got the wrong end of the -”
He looked helplessly at Hermione, whose face was stricken.
“Harry,” she said timidly, “don’t you see? This… this is exactly why we need you… we need to
know what it’s r-really like… facing him… facing V-Voldemort.”