Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (37 page)

‘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 Io.

‘That’s definitely Percy’s handwriting,’ said Ron, sinking back into his chair and staring at the words on the outside of the scroll:
Ronald Weasley, Gryffindor House, Hogwarts.
He looked up at the other two. ‘What d’you reckon?’

‘Open it!’ said Hermione eagerly, and Harry nodded.

Ron unrolled the scroll and began to read. The further down the parchment his eyes travelled, the more pronounced became his scowl. When he had finished reading, he looked disgusted. He thrust the letter at Harry and Hermione, who leaned towards each other to read it together:

Harry looked up at Ron.

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

‘Give it back,’ said Ron, holding out his hand. ‘He is –’ Ron said jerkily, tearing Percy’s letter in half ‘the world’s –’ he tore it into quarters ‘biggest –’ he tore it into eighths ‘
git
.’ He threw the pieces into the fire.

‘Come on, we’ve got to get this finished sometime before dawn,’ he said briskly to Harry, pulling Professor Sinistra’s essay back towards him.

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

‘Oh, give them here,’ she said abruptly.

‘What?’ said Ron.

‘Give them to me, I’ll look through them and correct them,’ she said. ‘Are you serious? Ah, Hermione, you’re a life-saver,’ said Ron, ‘what can I –?’

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

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

It was now past midnight and the common room was deserted but for the three of them and Crookshanks. The only sound was that of Hermione’s quill scratching out sentences here and there on their essays and the ruffle of pages as she checked various facts in the reference books strewn across the table. Harry was exhausted. He also felt an odd, sick, empty feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with tiredness and everything to do with the letter now curling blackly in the heart of the fire.

He knew that half the people inside Hogwarts thought him strange, even mad; he knew that the
Daily Prophet
had been making snide allusions to him for months, but there was something about seeing it written down like that in Percy’s writing, about knowing that Percy was advising Ron to drop him and even to tell tales about him to Umbridge, that made his situation real to him as nothing else had. He had known Percy for four years, had stayed in his house during the summer holidays, shared a tent with him during the Quidditch World Cup, had even been awarded full marks by him in the second task of the Triwizard Tournament last year, yet now, Percy thought him unbalanced and possibly violent.

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

Harry blinked. He had just seen something in the fire that could not have been there. It had flashed into sight and vanished immediately. No … it could not have been … he had imagined it because he had been thinking about Sirius …

‘OK, write that down,’ Hermione said to Ron, pushing his essay and a sheet covered in her own writing back to Ron, ‘then add this conclusion I’ve written for you.’

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

‘– I’ll know you’re back to normal,’ said Hermione. ‘Harry, yours is OK except for this bit at the end, I think you must have misheard Professor Sinistra, Europa’s covered in ice, not mice – Harry?’

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

‘Er – Harry?’ said Ron uncertainly. ‘Why are you down there?’

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

He spoke quite calmly; after all, he had seen Sirius’s head in this very fire the previous year and talked to it, too; nevertheless, he could not be sure that he had really seen it this time … it had vanished so quickly …

‘Sirius’s head?’ Hermione repeated. ‘You mean like when he wanted to talk to you during the Triwizard Tournament? But he wouldn’t do that now, it would be too –
Sirius
!’

She gasped, gazing at the fire; Ron dropped his quill. There in the middle of the dancing flames sat Sirius’s head, long dark hair falling around his grinning face.

‘I was starting to think you’d go to bed before everyone else had disappeared,’ he said. ‘I’ve been checking every hour.’

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

‘Just for a few seconds to check if the coast was clear.’

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

‘Well, I think a girl – first-year, by the look of her – might’ve got a glimpse of me earlier, but don’t worry,’ Sirius said hastily, as Hermione clapped a hand to her mouth, ‘I was gone the moment she looked back at me and I’ll bet she just thought I was an oddly-shaped log or something.’

‘But, Sirius, this is taking an awful risk –’ Hermione began.

‘You sound like Molly,’ said Sirius. ‘This was the only way I could come up with of answering Harry’s letter without resorting to a code – and codes are breakable.’

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

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

‘I forgot,’ said Harry, which was perfectly true; his meeting with Cho in the Owlery had driven everything before it out of his mind. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Hermione, there was no way anyone would have got secret information out of it, was there, Sirius?’

‘No, it was very good,’ said Sirius, smiling. ‘Anyway, we’d better be quick, just in case we’re disturbed – your scar.’

‘What about –?’ Ron began, but Hermione interrupted him.

‘We’ll tell you afterwards. Go on, Sirius.’

‘Well, I know it can’t be fun when it hurts, but we don’t think it’s anything to really worry about. It kept aching all last year, didn’t it?’

‘Yeah, and Dumbledore said it happened whenever Voldemort was feeling a powerful emotion,’ said Harry, ignoring, as usual, Ron and Hermione’s winces. ‘So maybe he was just, I dunno, really angry or something the night I had that detention.’

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

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

‘I doubt it,’ said Sirius. ‘I know her by reputation and I’m sure she’s no Death Eater –’

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

‘Yes, but the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters,’ said Sirius with a wry smile. ‘I know she’s a nasty piece of work, though – you should hear Remus talk about her.’

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

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

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

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

‘Scared of them, I expect,’ said Sirius, smiling at her indignation. ‘Apparently, she loathes part-humans; she campaigned to have merpeople rounded up and tagged last year, too. Imagine wasting your time and energy persecuting merpeople when there are little toerags like Kreacher on the loose.’

Ron laughed but Hermione looked upset.

‘Sirius!’ she said reproachfully. ‘Honestly, if you made a bit of an effort with Kreacher, I’m sure he’d respond. After all, you are the only member of his family he’s got left, and Professor Dumbledore said –’

‘So, what are Umbridge’s lessons like?’ Sirius interrupted. ‘Is she training you all to kill half-breeds?’

‘No,’ said Harry, ignoring Hermione’s affronted look at being cut off in her defence of Kreacher. ‘She’s not letting us use magic at all!’

‘All we do is read the stupid textbook,’ said Ron.

‘Ah, well, that figures,’ said Sirius. ‘Our information from inside the Ministry is that Fudge doesn’t want you trained in combat.’

‘Trained in combat!’
repeated Harry incredulously. ‘What does he think we’re doing here, forming some sort of wizard army?’

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

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

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