‘Because it means I know what he’s doing,’ said Harry.

  ‘So you’re not even going to try to shut him out?’

  ‘Hermione, I can’t. You know I’m lousy at Occlumency, I never got the hang of it.’

  ‘You never really tried!’ she said hotly. ‘I don’t get it, Harry – do you like having this special connection or relationship or what – whatever –’

  She faltered under the look he gave her as he stood up.

  ‘Like it?’ he said quietly. ‘Would you like it?’

  ‘I – no – I’m sorry, Harry, I didn’t mean –’

  ‘I hate it, I hate the fact that he can get inside me, that I have to watch him when he’s most dangerous. But I’m going to use it.’

  ‘Dumbledore –’

  ‘Forget Dumbledore. This is my choice, nobody else’s. I want to know why he’s after Gregorovitch.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He’s a foreign wandmaker,’ said Harry. ‘He made Krum’s wand and Krum reckons he’s brilliant.’

  ‘But according to you,’ said Ron, ‘Voldemort’s got Ollivander locked up somewhere. If he’s already got a wandmaker, what does he need another one for?’

  ‘Maybe he agrees with Krum, maybe he thinks Gregorovitch is better … or else he thinks Gregorovitch will be able to explain what my wand did when he was chasing me, because Ollivander didn’t know.’

  Harry glanced into the cracked, dusty mirror and saw Ron and Hermione exchanging sceptical looks behind his back.

  ‘Harry, you keep talking about what your wand did,’ said Hermione, ‘but you made it happen! Why are you so determined not to take responsibility for your own power?’

  ‘Because I know it wasn’t me! And so does Voldemort, Hermione! We both know what really happened!’

  They glared at each other: Harry knew that he had not convinced Hermione and that she was marshalling counter-arguments, against both his theory on his wand and the fact that he was permitting himself to see into Voldemort’s mind. To his relief, Ron intervened.

  ‘Drop it,’ he advised her. ‘It’s up to him. And if we’re going to the Ministry tomorrow, don’t you reckon we should go over the plan?’

  Reluctantly, as the other two could tell, Hermione let the matter rest, though Harry was quite sure she would attack again at the first opportunity. In the meantime, they returned to the basement kitchen, where Kreacher served them all stew and treacle tart.

  They did not get to bed until late that night, after spending hours going over and over their plan until they could recite it, word-perfect, to each other. Harry, who was now sleeping in Sirius’s room, lay in bed with his wandlight trained on the old photograph of his father, Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew, and muttered the plan to himself for another ten minutes. As he extinguished his wand, however, he was thinking not of Polyjuice Potion, Puking Pastilles or the navy blue robes of Magical Maintenance; he thought of Gregorovitch the wandmaker, and how long he could hope to remain hidden while Voldemort sought him so determinedly.

  Dawn seemed to follow midnight with indecent haste.

  ‘You look terrible,’ was Ron’s greeting, as he entered the room to wake Harry.

  ‘Not for long,’ said Harry, yawning.

  They found Hermione downstairs in the kitchen. She was being served coffee and hot rolls by Kreacher and wearing the slightly manic expression that Harry associated with exam revision.

  ‘Robes,’ she said under her breath, acknowledging their presence with a nervous nod and continuing to poke around in her beaded bag, ‘Polyjuice Potion … Invisibility Cloak … Decoy Detonators … you should each take a couple just in case … Puking Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougat, Extendable Ears …’

  They gulped down their breakfast then set off upstairs, Kreacher bowing them out and promising to have a steak and kidney pie ready for them when they returned.

  ‘Bless him,’ said Ron fondly, ‘and when you think I used to fantasise about cutting off his head and sticking it on the wall.’

  They made their way on to the front step with immense caution: they could see a couple of puffy-eyed Death Eaters watching the house from across the misty square. Hermione Disapparated with Ron first, then came back for Harry.

  After the usual brief spell of darkness and near suffocation, Harry found himself in the tiny alleyway where the first phase of their plan was scheduled to take place. It was as yet deserted, except for a couple of large bins; the first Ministry workers did not usually appear here until at least eight o’clock.

  ‘Right then,’ said Hermione, checking her watch. ‘She ought to be here in about five minutes. When I’ve Stunned her –’

  ‘Hermione, we know,’ said Ron sternly. ‘And I thought we were supposed to open the door before she got here?’

  Hermione squealed.

  ‘I nearly forgot! Stand back –’

  She pointed her wand at the padlocked and heavily graffitied fire door beside them, which burst open with a crash. The dark corridor behind it led, as they knew from their careful scouting trips, into an empty theatre. Hermione pulled the door back towards her, to make it look as though it was still closed.

  ‘And now,’ she said, turning back to face the other two in the alleyway, ‘we put on the Cloak again –’

  ‘– and we wait,’ Ron finished, throwing it over Hermione’s head like baize over a budgerigar and rolling his eyes at Harry.

  Little more than a minute later, there was a tiny pop and a little Ministry witch with flyaway, grey hair Apparated feet from them, blinking a little in the sudden brightness; the sun had just come out from behind a cloud. She barely had time to enjoy the unexpected warmth, however, before Hermione’s silent Stunning Spell hit her in the chest and she toppled over.

  ‘Nicely done, Hermione,’ said Ron, emerging from behind a bin beside the theatre door as Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak. Together they carried the little witch into the dark passageway that led backstage. Hermione plucked a few hairs from the witch’s head and added them to a flask of muddy Polyjuice Potion she had taken from the beaded bag. Ron was rummaging through the little witch’s handbag.

  ‘She’s Mafalda Hopkirk,’ he said, reading a small card that identified their victim as an assistant in the Improper Use of Magic Office. ‘You’d better take this, Hermione, and here are the tokens.’

  He passed her several small golden coins, all embossed with the letters M.O.M., which he had taken from the witch’s purse.

  Hermione drank the Polyjuice Potion, which was now a pleasant heliotrope colour, and within seconds stood before them, the double of Mafalda Hopkirk. As she removed Mafalda’s spectacles and put them on, Harry checked his watch.

  ‘We’re running late, Mr Magical Maintenance will be here any second.’

  They hurried to close the door on the real Mafalda; Harry and Ron threw the Invisibility Cloak over themselves but Hermione remained in view, waiting. Seconds later there was another pop, and a small, ferrety-looking wizard appeared before them.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mafalda.’

  ‘Hello!’ said Hermione in a quavery voice. ‘How are you today?’

  ‘Not so good, actually,’ replied the little wizard, who looked thoroughly downcast.

  As Hermione and the wizard headed for the main road, Harry and Ron crept along behind them.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear you’re under the weather,’ said Hermione, talking firmly over the little wizard as he tried to expound upon his problems; it was essential to stop him reaching the street. ‘Here, have a sweet.’

  ‘Eh? Oh, no thanks –’

  ‘I insist!’ said Hermione aggressively, shaking the bag of pastilles in his face. Looking rather alarmed, the little wizard took one.

  The effect was instantaneous. The moment the pastille touched his tongue, the little wizard started vomiting so hard that he did not even notice as Hermione yanked a handful of hairs from the top of his head.

  ‘Oh dear!’ she said, as he splattered the alley with sick. ‘Perhaps you’d better take the day off!’

  ‘No – no!’ He choked and retched, trying to continue on his way despite being unable to walk straight. ‘I must – today – must go –’

  ‘But that’s just silly!’ said Hermione, alarmed. ‘You can’t go to work in this state – I think you ought to go to St Mungo’s and get them to sort you out!’

  The wizard had collapsed, heaving, on all fours, still trying to crawl towards the main street.

  ‘You simply can’t go to work like this!’ cried Hermione.

  At last he seemed to accept the truth of her words. Using a repulsed Hermione to claw his way back into a standing position, he turned on the spot and vanished, leaving nothing behind but the bag Ron had snatched from his hand as he went, and some flying chunks of vomit.

  ‘Urgh,’ said Hermione, holding up the skirts of her robe to avoid the puddles of sick. ‘It would have made much less mess to Stun him too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ron, emerging from under the Cloak holding the wizard’s bag, ‘but I still think a whole pile of unconscious bodies would have drawn more attention. Keen on his job, though, isn’t he? Chuck us the hair and the Potion, then.’

  Within two minutes, Ron stood before them, as small and ferrety as the sick wizard, and wearing the navy blue robes that had been folded in his bag.

  ‘Weird he wasn’t wearing them today, wasn’t it, seeing how much he wanted to go? Anyway, I’m Reg Cattermole, according to the label in the back.’

  ‘Now wait here,’ Hermione told Harry, who was still under the Invisibility Cloak, ‘and we’ll be back with some hairs for you.’

  He had to wait ten minutes, but it seemed much longer to Harry, skulking alone in the sick-splattered alleyway, beside the door concealing the Stunned Mafalda. Finally, Ron and Hermione reappeared.

  ‘We don’t know who he is,’ Hermione said, passing Harry several curly, black hairs, ‘but he’s gone home with a dreadful nosebleed! Here, he’s pretty tall, you’ll need bigger robes …’

  She pulled out a set of the old robes Kreacher had laundered for them, and Harry retired to take the Potion and change.

  Once the painful transformation was complete, he was more than six feet tall and, from what he could tell from his well-muscled arms, powerfully built. He also had a beard. Stowing the Invisibility Cloak and his glasses inside his new robes, he rejoined the other two.

  ‘Blimey, that’s scary,’ said Ron, looking up at Harry, who now towered over him.

  ‘Take one of Mafalda’s tokens,’ Hermione told Harry, ‘and let’s go, it’s nearly nine.’

  They stepped out of the alleyway together. Fifty yards along the crowded pavement, there were spiked black railings flanking two flights of steps, one labelled Gentlemen, the other, Ladies.

  ‘See you in a moment, then,’ said Hermione nervously, and she tottered off down the steps to the ladies’. Harry and Ron joined a number of oddly dressed men descending into what appeared to be an ordinary underground public toilet, tiled in grimy black and white.

  ‘Morning, Reg!’ called another wizard in navy blue robes as he let himself into a cubicle by inserting his golden token into a slot in the door. ‘Blooming pain in the bum, this, eh? Forcing us all to get to work this way! Who are they expecting to turn up, Harry Potter?’

  The wizard roared with laughter at his own wit. Ron gave a forced chuckle.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘stupid, isn’t it?’

  And he and Harry let themselves into adjoining cubicles.

  To Harry’s left and right came the sound of flushing. He crouched down and peered through the gap at the bottom of the cubicle, just in time to see a pair of booted feet climbing into the toilet next door. He looked left, and saw Ron blinking at him.

  ‘We have to flush ourselves in?’ he whispered.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Harry whispered back; his voice came out deep and gravelly.

  They both stood up. Feeling exceptionally foolish, Harry clambered into the toilet.

  He knew at once that he had done the right thing; though he appeared to be standing in water, his shoes, feet and robes remained quite dry. He reached up, pulled the chain, and next moment had zoomed down a short chute, emerging out of a fireplace into the Ministry of Magic.

  He got up clumsily; there was a lot more of his body than he was accustomed to. The great Atrium seemed darker than Harry remembered it. Previously, a golden fountain had filled the centre of the hall, casting shimmering spots of light over the polished wooden floor and walls. Now a gigantic statue of black stone dominated the scene. It was rather frightening, this vast sculpture of a witch and a wizard sitting on ornately carved thrones, looking down at the Ministry workers toppling out of fireplaces below them. Engraved in foot-high letters at the base of the statue were the words: MAGIC IS MIGHT.

  Harry received a heavy blow on the back of the legs: another wizard had just flown out of the fireplace behind him.

  ‘Out of the way, can’t y— oh, sorry, Runcorn!’

  Clearly frightened, the balding wizard hurried away. Apparently the man whom Harry was impersonating, Runcorn, was intimidating.

  ‘Psst!’ said a voice, and he looked round to see a wispy little witch and the ferrety wizard from Magical Maintenance gesturing to him from over beside the statue. Harry hastened to join them.

  ‘You got in all right, then?’ Hermione whispered to Harry.

  ‘No, he’s still stuck in the bog,’ said Ron.

  ‘Oh, very funny … it’s horrible, isn’t it?’ she said to Harry, who was staring up at the statue. ‘Have you seen what they’re sitting on?’

  Harry looked more closely and realised that what he had thought were decoratively carved thrones were actually mounds of carved humans: hundreds and hundreds of naked bodies, men, women and children, all with rather stupid, ugly faces, twisted and pressed together to support the weight of the handsomely robed wizards.

  ‘Muggles,’ whispered Hermione. ‘In their rightful place. Come on, let’s get going.’

  They joined the stream of witches and wizards moving towards the golden gates at the end of the hall, looking around as surreptitiously as possible, but there was no sign of the distinctive figure of Dolores Umbridge. They passed through the gates and into a smaller hall, where queues were forming in front of twenty golden grilles housing as many lifts. They had barely joined the nearest one when a voice said, ‘Cattermole!’

  They looked around: Harry’s stomach turned over. One of the Death Eaters who had witnessed Dumbledore’s death was striding towards them. The Ministry workers beside them fell silent, their eyes downcast; Harry could feel fear rippling through them. The man’s scowling, slightly brutish face was somehow at odds with his magnificent, sweeping robes, which were embroidered with much gold thread. Someone in the crowd around the lifts called sycophantically, ‘Morning, Yaxley!’ Yaxley ignored them.

  ‘I requested somebody from Magical Maintenance to sort out my office, Cattermole. It’s still raining in there.’

  Ron looked around as though hoping somebody else would intervene, but nobody spoke.

  ‘Raining … in your office? That’s – that’s not good, is it?’

  Ron gave a nervous laugh. Yaxley’s eyes widened.

  ‘You think it’s funny, Cattermole, do you?’

  A pair of witches broke away from the queue for the lift and bustled off.

  ‘No,’ said Ron, ‘no, of course –’

  ‘You realise that I am on my way downstairs to interrogate your wife, Cattermole? In fact, I’m quite surprised you’re not down there holding her hand while she waits. Already given her up as a bad job, have you? Probably wise. Be sure and marry a pure-blood next time.’

  Hermione had let out a little squeak of horror. Yaxley looked at her. She coughed feebly and turned away.

  ‘I – I –’ stammered Ron.

  ‘But if my wife were accused of being a Mudblood,’ said Yaxley, ‘– not that any woman I married would ever be mistaken for such filth – and the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement needed a job doing, I would make it my priority to do that job, Cattermole. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Ron.

  ‘Then attend to it, Cattermole, and if my office is not completely dry within an hour your wife’s Blood Status will be in even graver doubt than it is now.’

  The golden grille before them clattered open. With a nod and unpleasant smile to Harry, who was evidently expected to appreciate this treatment of Cattermole, Yaxley swept away towards another lift. Harry, Ron and Hermione entered theirs, but nobody followed them: it was as if they were infectious. The grilles shut with a clang and the lift began to move upwards.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Ron asked the other two at once; he looked stricken. ‘If I don’t turn up, my wife – I mean, Cattermole’s wife –’

  ‘We’ll come with you, we should stick together –’ began Harry, but Ron shook his head feverishly.

  ‘That’s mental, we haven’t got much time. You two find Umbridge, I’ll go and sort out Yaxley’s office – but how do I stop it raining?’

  ‘Try Finite Incantatem,’ said Hermione at once, ‘that should stop the rain if it’s a hex or curse; if it doesn’t, something’s gone wrong with an Atmospheric Charm, which will be more difficult to fix, so as an interim measure try Impervius to protect his belongings –’

  ‘Say it again, slowly –’ said Ron, searching his pockets desperately for a quill, but at that moment the lift juddered to a halt. A disembodied female voice said, ‘Level Four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, incorporating Beast, Being and Spirit Divisions, Goblin Liaison Office and Pest Advisory Bureau,’ and the grilles slid open again, admitting a couple of wizards and several pale violet paper aeroplanes that fluttered around the lamp in the ceiling of the lift.

  ‘Morning Albert,’ said a bushily whiskered man, smiling at Harry. He glanced over at Ron and Hermione as the lift creaked upwards once more; Hermione was now whispering frantic instructions to Ron. The wizard leaned towards Harry, leering, and muttered, ‘Dirk Cresswell, eh? From Goblin Liaison? Nice one, Albert. I’m pretty confident I’ll get his job, now!’