Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (49 page)

‘What about your parents?’ asked Harry.

‘Well, they’ve forbidden me to get on the wrong side of Umbridge, too,’ said Cho, drawing herself up proudly. ‘But if they think I’m not going to fight You-Know-Who after what happened to Cedric –’

She broke off, looking rather confused, and an awkward silence fell between them; Terry Boot’s wand went whizzing past Harry’s ear and hit Alicia Spinnet hard on the nose.

‘Well, my dad is
very
supportive of any anti-Ministry action!’ said Luna Lovegood proudly from just behind Harry; evidently she had been eavesdropping on his conversation while Justin Finch-Fletchley attempted to disentangle himself from the robes that had flown up over his head. ‘He’s always saying he’d believe anything of Fudge; I mean, the number of goblins Fudge has had assassinated! And of course he uses the Department of Mysteries to develop terrible poisons, which he secretly feeds to anybody who disagrees with him. And then there’s his Umgubular Slashkilter –’

‘Don’t ask,’ Harry muttered to Cho as she opened her mouth, looking puzzled. She giggled.

‘Hey, Harry,’ Hermione called from the other end of the room, ‘have you checked the time?’

He looked down at his watch and was shocked to see it was already ten past nine, which meant they needed to get back to their common rooms immediately or risk being caught and punished by Filch for being out of bounds. He blew his whistle; everybody stopped shouting ‘
Expelliarmus
’ and the last couple of wands clattered to the floor.

‘Well, that was pretty good,’ said Harry, ‘but we’ve overrun, we’d better leave it here. Same time, same place next week?’

‘Sooner!’ said Dean Thomas eagerly and many people nodded in agreement.

Angelina, however, said quickly, ‘The Quidditch season’s about to start, we need team practices too!’

‘Let’s say next Wednesday night, then,’ said Harry, ‘we can decide on additional meetings then. Come on, we’d better get going.’

He pulled out the Marauder’s Map again and checked it carefully for signs of teachers on the seventh floor. He let them all leave in threes and fours, watching their tiny dots anxiously to see that they returned safely to their dormitories: the Hufflepuffs to the basement corridor that also led to the kitchens; the Ravenclaws to a tower on the west side of the castle, and the Gryffindors along the corridor to the Fat Lady’s portrait.

‘That was really, really good, Harry,’ said Hermione, when finally it was just her, Harry and Ron who were left.

‘Yeah, it was!’ said Ron enthusiastically, as they slipped out of the door and watched it melt back into stone behind them. ‘Did you see me disarm Hermione, Harry?’

‘Only once,’ said Hermione, stung. ‘I got you loads more than you got me –’

‘I did not only get you once, I got you at least three times –’

‘Well, if you’re counting the one where you tripped over your own feet and knocked the wand out of my hand –’

They argued all the way back to the common room, but Harry was not listening to them. He had one eye on the Marauder’s Map, but he was also thinking of Cho saying he made her nervous.

Harry felt as though he were carrying some kind of talisman inside his chest over the following two weeks, a glowing secret that supported him through Umbridge’s classes and even made it possible for him to smile blandly as he looked into her horrible bulging eyes. He and the DA were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing she and the Ministry most feared, and whenever he was supposed to be reading Wilbert Slinkhard’s book during her lessons he dwelled instead on satisfying memories of their most recent meetings, remembering how Neville had successfully disarmed Hermione, how Colin Creevey had mastered the Impediment Jinx after three meetings’ hard effort, how Parvati Patil had produced such a good Reductor Curse that she had reduced the table carrying all the Sneakoscopes to dust.

He was finding it almost impossible to fix a regular night of the week for the DA meetings, as they had to accommodate three separate teams’ Quidditch practices, which were often rearranged due to bad weather conditions; but Harry was not sorry about this; he had a feeling that it was probably better to keep the timing of their meetings unpredictable. If anyone was watching them, it would be hard to make out a pattern.

Hermione soon devised a very clever method of communicating the time and date of the next meeting to all the members in case they needed to change it at short notice, because it would look suspicious if people from different Houses were seen crossing the Great Hall to talk to each other too often. She gave each of the members of the DA a fake Galleon (Ron became very excited when he first saw the basket and was convinced she was actually giving out gold).

‘You see the numerals around the edge of the coins?’ Hermione said, holding one up for examination at the end of their fourth meeting. The coin gleamed fat and yellow in the light from the torches. ‘On real Galleons that’s just a serial number referring to the goblin who cast the coin. On these fake coins, though, the numbers will change to reflect the time and date of the next meeting. The coins will grow hot when the date changes, so if you’re carrying them in a pocket you’ll be able to feel them. We take one each, and when Harry sets the date of the next meeting he’ll change the numbers on
his
coin, and because I’ve put a Protean Charm on them, they’ll all change to mimic his.’

A blank silence greeted Hermione’s words. She looked around at all the faces upturned to her, rather disconcerted.

‘Well – I thought it was a good idea,’ she said uncertainly, ‘I mean, even if Umbridge asked us to turn out our pockets, there’s nothing fishy about carrying a Galleon, is there? But … well, if you don’t want to use them –’

‘You can do a Protean Charm?’ said Terry Boot.

‘Yes,’ said Hermione.

‘But that’s … that’s N.E.W.T. standard, that is,’ he said weakly.

‘Oh,’ said Hermione, trying to look modest. ‘Oh … well … yes, I suppose it is.’

‘How come you’re not in Ravenclaw?’ he demanded, staring at Hermione with something close to wonder. ‘With brains like yours?’

‘Well, the Sorting Hat did seriously consider putting me in Ravenclaw during my Sorting,’ said Hermione brightly, ‘but it decided on Gryffindor in the end. So, does that mean we’re using the Galleons?’

There was a murmur of assent and everybody moved forwards to collect one from the basket. Harry looked sideways at Hermione.

‘You know what these remind me of?’

‘No, what’s that?’

‘The Death Eaters’ scars. Voldemort touches one of them, and all their scars burn, and they know they’ve got to join him.’

‘Well … yes,’ said Hermione quietly, ‘that
is
where I got the idea … but you’ll notice I decided to engrave the date on bits of metal rather than on our members’ skin.’

‘Yeah … I prefer your way,’ said Harry, grinning, as he slipped his Galleon into his pocket. ‘I suppose the only danger with these is that we might accidentally spend them.’

‘Fat chance,’ said Ron, who was examining his own fake Galleon with a slightly mournful air, ‘I haven’t got any real Galleons to confuse it with.’

As the first Quidditch match of the season, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, drew nearer, their DA meetings were put on hold because Angelina insisted on almost daily practices. The fact that the Quidditch Cup had not been held for so long added considerably to the interest and excitement surrounding the forthcoming game; the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were taking a lively interest in the outcome, for they, of course, would be playing both teams over the coming year; and the Heads of House of the competing teams, though they attempted to disguise it under a decent pretence of sportsmanship, were determined to see their own side victorious. Harry realised how much Professor McGonagall cared about beating Slytherin when she abstained from giving them homework in the week leading up to the match.

‘I think you’ve got enough to be getting on with at the moment,’ she said loftily. Nobody could quite believe their ears until she looked directly at Harry and Ron and said grimly, ‘I’ve become accustomed to seeing the Quidditch Cup in my study, boys, and I really don’t want to have to hand it over to Professor Snape, so use the extra time to practise, won’t you?’

Snape was no less obviously partisan; he had booked the Quidditch pitch for Slytherin practice so often that the Gryffindors had difficulty getting on it to play. He was also turning a deaf ear to the many reports of Slytherin attempts to hex Gryffindor players in the corridors. When Alicia Spinnet turned up in the hospital wing with her eyebrows growing so thick and fast they obscured her vision and obstructed her mouth, Snape insisted that she must have attempted a Hair-thickening Charm on herself and refused to listen to the fourteen eye-witnesses who insisted they had seen the Slytherin Keeper, Miles Bletchley, hit her from behind with a jinx while she worked in the library.

Harry felt optimistic about Gryffindor’s chances; they had, after all, never lost to Malfoy’s team. Admittedly, Ron was still not performing to Wood’s standard, but he was working extremely hard to improve. His greatest weakness was a tendency to lose confidence after he’d made a blunder; if he let in one goal he became flustered and was therefore likely to miss more. On the other hand, Harry had seen Ron make some truly spectacular saves when he was on form; during one memorable practice he had hung one-handed from his broom and kicked the Quaffle so hard away from the goalhoop that it soared the length of the pitch and through the centre hoop at the other end; the rest of the team felt this save compared favourably with one made recently by Barry Ryan, the Irish International Keeper, against Poland’s top Chaser, Ladislaw Zamojski. Even Fred had said that Ron might yet make him and George proud, and that they were seriously considering admitting he was related to them, something they assured him they had been trying to deny for four years.

The only thing really worrying Harry was how much Ron was allowing the tactics of the Slytherin team to upset him before they even got on to the pitch. Harry, of course, had endured their snide comments for over four years, so whispers of, ‘Hey, Potty, I heard Warrington’s sworn to knock you off your broom on Saturday’, far from chilling his blood, made him laugh. ‘Warrington’s aim’s so pathetic I’d be more worried if he was aiming for the person next to me,’ he retorted, which made Ron and Hermione laugh and wiped the smirk off Pansy Parkinson’s face.

But Ron had never endured a relentless campaign of insults, jeers and intimidation. When Slytherins, some of them seventh-years and considerably larger than he was, muttered as they passed in the corridors, ‘Got your bed booked in the hospital wing, Weasley?’ he didn’t laugh, but turned a delicate shade of green. When Draco Malfoy imitated Ron dropping the Quaffle (which he did whenever they came within sight of each other), Ron’s ears glowed red and his hands shook so badly that he was likely to drop whatever he was holding at the time, too.

October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy draughts that bit at exposed hands and faces. The skies and the ceiling of the Great Hall turned a pale, pearly grey, the mountains around Hogwarts were snowcapped, and the temperature in the castle dropped so low that many students wore their thick protective dragonskin gloves in the corridors between lessons.

The morning of the match dawned bright and cold. When Harry awoke he looked round at Ron’s bed and saw him sitting bolt upright, his arms around his knees, staring fixedly into space.

‘You all right?’ said Harry.

Ron nodded but did not speak. Harry was reminded forcibly of the time Ron had accidentally put a Slug-vomiting Charm on himself; he looked just as pale and sweaty as he had done then, not to mention as reluctant to open his mouth.

‘You just need some breakfast,’ Harry said bracingly. ‘C’mon.’

The Great Hall was filling up fast when they arrived, the talk louder and the mood more exuberant than usual. As they passed the Slytherin table there was an upsurge of noise. Harry looked round and saw that, in addition to the usual green and silver scarves and hats, every one of them was wearing a silver badge in the shape of what seemed to be a crown. For some reason many of them waved at Ron, laughing uproariously. Harry tried to see what was written on the badges as he walked by, but he was too concerned to get Ron past their table quickly to linger long enough to read them.

They received a rousing welcome at the Gryffindor table, where everyone was wearing red and gold, but far from raising Ron’s spirits the cheers seemed to sap the last of his morale; he collapsed on to the nearest bench looking as though he were facing his final meal.

‘I must’ve been mental to do this,’ he said in a croaky whisper.
‘Mental.’

‘Don’t be thick,’ said Harry firmly, passing him a choice of cereals, ‘you’re going to be fine. It’s normal to be nervous.’

‘I’m rubbish,’ croaked Ron. ‘I’m lousy. I can’t play to save my life. What was I thinking?’

‘Get a grip,’ said Harry sternly. ‘Look at that save you made with your foot the other day, even Fred and George said it was brilliant.’

Ron turned a tortured face to Harry.

‘That was an accident,’ he whispered miserably. ‘I didn’t mean to do it – I slipped off my broom when none of you were looking and when I was trying to get back on I kicked the Quaffle by accident.’

‘Well,’ said Harry, recovering quickly from this unpleasant surprise, ‘a few more accidents like that and the game’s in the bag, isn’t it?’

Hermione and Ginny sat down opposite them wearing red and gold scarves, gloves and rosettes.

‘How’re you feeling?’ Ginny asked Ron, who was now staring into the dregs of milk at the bottom of his empty cereal bowl as though seriously considering attempting to drown himself in them.

‘He’s just nervous,’ said Harry.

‘Well, that’s a good sign, I never feel you perform as well in exams if you’re not a bit nervous,’ said Hermione heartily.