Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (44 page)

‘Well, put it this way,’ said Hermione, ‘it’ll make Eloise Midgeon’s acne look like a couple of cute freckles. Come on, let’s get down to breakfast and see what the others think … I wonder whether this has been put up in all the houses?’

It was immediately apparent on entering the Great Hall that Umbridge’s sign had not only appeared in Gryffindor Tower. There was a peculiar intensity about the chatter and an extra measure of movement in the Hall as people scurried up and down their tables conferring on what they had read. Harry, Ron and Hermione had barely taken their seats when Neville, Dean, Fred, George and Ginny descended upon them.

‘Did you see it?’

‘D’you reckon she knows?’

‘What are we going to do?’

They were all looking at Harry. He glanced around to make sure there were no teachers near them.

‘We’re going to do it anyway, of course,’ he said quietly.

‘Knew you’d say that,’ said George, beaming and thumping Harry on the arm.

‘The prefects as well?’ said Fred, looking quizzically at Ron and Hermione.

‘Of course,’ said Hermione coolly.

‘Here come Ernie and Hannah Abbott,’ said Ron, looking over his shoulder. ‘
And
those Ravenclaw blokes and Smith … and no one looks very spotty.’

Hermione looked alarmed.

‘Never mind spots, the idiots can’t come over here now, it’ll look really suspicious – sit down!’ she mouthed to Ernie and Hannah, gesturing frantically to them to rejoin the Hufflepuff table. ‘Later! We’ll – talk – to – you –
later
!’

‘I’ll tell Michael,’ said Ginny impatiently, swinging herself off her bench, ‘the fool, honestly …’

She hurried off towards the Ravenclaw table; Harry watched her go. Cho was sitting not far away, talking to the curly-haired friend she had brought along to the Hog’s Head. Would Umbridge’s notice scare her off meeting them again?

But the full repercussions of the sign were not felt until they were leaving the Great Hall for History of Magic.

‘Harry!
Ron!
’

It was Angelina and she was hurrying towards them looking perfectly desperate.

‘It’s OK,’ said Harry quietly, when she was near enough to hear him. ‘We’re still going to –’

‘You realise she’s including Quidditch in this?’ Angelina said over him. ‘We have to go and ask permission to re-form the Gryffindor team!’

‘What?’
said Harry.

‘No way,’ said Ron, appalled.

‘You read the sign, it mentions teams too! So listen, Harry … I am saying this for the last time … please,
please
don’t lose your temper with Umbridge again or she might not let us play any more!’

‘OK, OK,’ said Harry, for Angelina looked as though she was on the verge of tears. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll behave myself …’

‘Bet Umbridge is in History of Magic,’ said Ron grimly, as they set off for Binns’s lesson. ‘She hasn’t inspected Binns yet … bet you anything she’s there …’

But he was wrong; the only teacher present when they entered was Professor Binns, floating an inch or so above his chair as usual and preparing to continue his monotonous drone on giant wars. Harry did not even attempt to follow what he was saying today; he doodled idly on his parchment ignoring Hermione’s frequent glares and nudges, until a particularly painful poke in the ribs made him look up angrily.

‘What?’

She pointed at the window. Harry looked round. Hedwig was perched on the narrow window ledge, gazing through the thick glass at him, a letter tied to her leg. Harry could not understand it; they had just had breakfast, why on earth hadn’t she delivered the letter then, as usual? Many of his classmates were pointing out Hedwig to each other, too.

‘Oh, I’ve always loved that owl, she’s so beautiful,’ Harry heard Lavender sigh to Parvati.

He glanced round at Professor Binns who continued to read his notes, serenely unaware that the class’s attention was even less focused upon him than usual. Harry slipped quietly off his chair, crouched down and hurried along the row to the window, where he slid the catch and opened it very slowly.

He had expected Hedwig to hold out her leg so that he could remove the letter and then fly off to the Owlery, but the moment the window was open wide enough she hopped inside, hooting dolefully. He closed the window with an anxious glance at Professor Binns, crouched low again and sped back to his seat with Hedwig on his shoulder. He regained his seat, transferred Hedwig to his lap and made to remove the letter tied to her leg.

Only then did he realise that Hedwig’s feathers were oddly ruffled; some were bent the wrong way, and she was holding one of her wings at an odd angle.

‘She’s hurt!’ Harry whispered, bending his head low over her. Hermione and Ron leaned in closer; Hermione even put down her quill. ‘Look – there’s something wrong with her wing –’

Hedwig was quivering; when Harry made to touch the wing she gave a little jump, all her feathers on end as though she was inflating herself, and gazed at him reproachfully.

‘Professor Binns,’ said Harry loudly, and everyone in the class turned to look at him. ‘I’m not feeling well.’

Professor Binns raised his eyes from his notes, looking amazed, as always, to find the room in front of him full of people.

‘Not feeling well?’ he repeated hazily.

‘Not at all well,’ said Harry firmly, getting to his feet with Hedwig concealed behind his back. ‘I think I need to go to the hospital wing.’

‘Yes,’ said Professor Binns, clearly very much wrong-footed. ‘Yes … yes, hospital wing … well, off you go, then, Perkins …’

Once outside the room, Harry returned Hedwig to his shoulder and hurried off up the corridor, pausing to think only when he was out of sight of Binns’s door. His first choice of somebody to cure Hedwig would have been Hagrid, of course, but as he had no idea where Hagrid was his only remaining option was to find Professor Grubbly-Plank and hope she would help.

He peered out of a window at the blustery, overcast grounds. There was no sign of her anywhere near Hagrid’s cabin; if she was not teaching, she was probably in the staff room. He set off downstairs, Hedwig hooting feebly as she swayed on his shoulder.

Two stone gargoyles flanked the staff-room door. As Harry approached, one of them croaked, ‘You should be in class, Sonny Jim.’

‘This is urgent,’ said Harry curtly.

‘Ooooh,
urgent
, is it?’ said the other gargoyle in a high-pitched voice. ‘Well, that’s put
us
in our place, hasn’t it?’

Harry knocked. He heard footsteps, then the door opened and he found himself face to face with Professor McGonagall.

‘You haven’t been given another detention!’ she said at once, her square spectacles flashing alarmingly.

‘No, Professor!’ said Harry hastily.

‘Well then, why are you out of class?’

‘It’s
urgent
, apparently,’ said the second gargoyle snidely.

‘I’m looking for Professor Grubbly-Plank,’ Harry explained. ‘It’s my owl, she’s injured.’

‘Injured owl, did you say?’

Professor Grubbly-Plank appeared at Professor McGonagall’s shoulder, smoking a pipe and holding a copy of the
Daily Prophet.

‘Yes,’ said Harry, lifting Hedwig carefully off his shoulder, ‘she turned up after the other post owls and her wing’s all funny, look –’

Professor Grubbly-Plank stuck her pipe firmly between her teeth and took Hedwig from Harry while Professor McGonagall watched.

‘Hmm,’ said Professor Grubbly-Plank, her pipe waggling slightly as she talked. ‘Looks like something’s attacked her. Can’t think what would have done it, though. Thestrals will sometimes go for birds, of course, but Hagrid’s got the Hogwarts Thestrals well-trained not to touch owls.’

Harry neither knew nor cared what Thestrals were; he just wanted to know that Hedwig was going to be all right. Professor McGonagall, however, looked sharply at Harry and said, ‘Do you know how far this owl’s travelled, Potter?’

‘Er,’ said Harry. ‘From London, I think.’

He met her eyes briefly and knew, by the way her eyebrows had joined in the middle, that she understood ‘London’ to mean ‘number twelve, Grimmauld Place’.

Professor Grubbly-Plank pulled a monocle out of the inside of her robes and screwed it into her eye to examine Hedwig’s wing closely. ‘I should be able to sort this out if you leave her with me, Potter,’ she said, ‘she shouldn’t be flying long distances for a few days, in any case.’

‘Er – right – thanks,’ said Harry, just as the bell rang for break.

‘No problem,’ said Professor Grubbly-Plank gruffly, turning back into the staff room.

‘Just a moment, Wilhelmina!’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘Potter’s letter!’

‘Oh yeah!’ said Harry, who had momentarily forgotten the scroll tied to Hedwig’s leg. Professor Grubbly-Plank handed it over and then disappeared into the staff room carrying Hedwig, who was staring at Harry as though unable to believe he would give her away like this. Feeling slightly guilty, he turned to go, but Professor McGonagall called him back.

‘Potter!’

‘Yes, Professor?’

She glanced up and down the corridor; there were students coming from both directions.

‘Bear in mind,’ she said quickly and quietly, her eyes on the scroll in his hand, ‘that channels of communication in and out of Hogwarts may be being watched, won’t you?’

‘I –’ said Harry, but the flood of students rolling along the corridor was almost upon him. Professor McGonagall gave him a curt nod and retreated into the staff room, leaving Harry to be swept out into the courtyard with the crowd. He spotted Ron and Hermione already standing in a sheltered corner, their cloak collars turned up against the wind. Harry slit open the scroll as he hurried towards them and found five words in Sirius’s handwriting:

Today, same time, same place.

‘Is Hedwig OK?’ asked Hermione anxiously, the moment he was within earshot.

‘Where did you take her?’ asked Ron.

‘To Grubbly-Plank,’ said Harry. ‘And I met McGonagall … listen …’

And he told them what Professor McGonagall had said. To his surprise, neither of the others looked shocked. On the contrary, they exchanged significant looks.

‘What?’ said Harry, looking from Ron to Hermione and back again.

‘Well, I was just saying to Ron … what if someone had tried to intercept Hedwig? I mean, she’s never been hurt on a flight before, has she?’

‘Who’s the letter from, anyway?’ asked Ron, taking the note from Harry.

‘Snuffles,’ said Harry quietly.

‘“Same time, same place?” Does he mean the fire in the common room?’

‘Obviously,’ said Hermione, also reading the note. She looked uneasy. ‘I just hope nobody else has read this …’

‘But it was still sealed and everything,’ said Harry, trying to convince himself as much as her. ‘And nobody would understand what it meant if they didn’t know where we’d spoken to him before, would they?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hermione anxiously, hitching her bag back over her shoulder as the bell rang again, ‘it wouldn’t be exactly difficult to re-seal the scroll by magic … and if anyone’s watching the Floo Network … but I don’t really see how we can warn him not to come without
that
being intercepted, too!’

They trudged down the stone steps to the dungeons for Potions, all three of them lost in thought, but as they reached the bottom of the steps they were recalled to themselves by the voice of Draco Malfoy, who was standing just outside Snape’s classroom door, waving around an official-looking piece of parchment and talking much louder than was necessary so that they could hear every word.

‘Yeah, Umbridge gave the Slytherin Quidditch team permission to continue playing straightaway, I went to ask her first thing this morning. Well, it was pretty much automatic, I mean, she knows my father really well, he’s always popping in and out of the Ministry … it’ll be interesting to see whether Gryffindor are allowed to keep playing, won’t it?’

‘Don’t rise,’ Hermione whispered imploringly to Harry and Ron, who were both watching Malfoy, faces set and fists clenched. ‘It’s what he wants.’

‘I mean,’ said Malfoy, raising his voice a little more, his grey eyes glittering malevolently in Harry and Ron’s direction, ‘if it’s a question of influence with the Ministry, I don’t think they’ve got much chance … from what my father says, they’ve been looking for an excuse to sack Arthur Weasley for years … and as for Potter … my father says it’s a matter of time before the Ministry has him carted off to St Mungo’s … apparently they’ve got a special ward for people whose brains have been addled by magic.’

Malfoy made a grotesque face, his mouth sagging open and his eyes rolling. Crabbe and Goyle gave their usual grunts of laughter; Pansy Parkinson shrieked with glee.

Something collided hard with Harry’s shoulder, knocking him sideways. A split second later he realised that Neville had just charged past him, heading straight for Malfoy.

‘Neville,
no
!’

Harry leapt forward and seized the back of Neville’s robes; Neville struggled frantically, his fists flailing, trying desperately to get at Malfoy who looked, for a moment, extremely shocked.

‘Help me!’ Harry flung at Ron, managing to get an arm around Neville’s neck and dragging him backwards, away from the Slytherins. Crabbe and Goyle were flexing their arms as they stepped in front of Malfoy, ready for the fight. Ron seized Neville’s arms, and together he and Harry succeeded in dragging Neville back into the Gryffindor line. Neville’s face was scarlet; the pressure Harry was exerting on his throat rendered him quite incomprehensible, but odd words spluttered from his mouth.

‘Not … funny … don’t … Mungo’s … show … him …’

The dungeon door opened. Snape appeared there. His black eyes swept up the Gryffindor line to the point where Harry and Ron were wrestling with Neville.

‘Fighting, Potter, Weasley, Longbottom?’ Snape said in his cold, sneering voice. ‘Ten points from Gryffindor. Release Longbottom, Potter, or it will be detention. Inside, all of you.’

Harry let go of Neville, who stood panting and glaring at him.

‘I had to stop you,’ Harry gasped, picking up his bag. ‘Crabbe and Goyle would’ve torn you apart.’