“Yes,” said Harry furiously. Snape had already given them homework and he had Quidditch practice this evening; this would mean another couple of sleepless nights. It did not seem possible that he had awoken that morning feeling very happy. All he felt now was a fervent desire for this day to end.

  “Maybe I’ll skive off Divination,” he said glumly, as they stood in the courtyard after lunch, the wind whipping at the hems of robes and brims of hats. “I’ll pretend to be ill and do Snape’s essay instead, then I won’t have to stay up half the night.”

  “You can’t skive off Divination,” said Hermione severely.

  “Hark who’s talking, you walked out of Divination, you hate Trelawney!” said Ron indignantly.

  “I don’t hate her,” said Hermione loftily. “I just think she’s an absolutely appalling teacher and a real old fraud. But Harry’s already missed History of Magic and I don’t think he ought to miss anything else today!”

  There was too much truth in this to ignore, so half an hour later Harry took his seat in the hot, overperfumed atmosphere of the Divination classroom, feeling angry at everybody. Professor Trelawney was yet again handing out copies of The Dream Oracle. Harry thought he’d surely be much better employed doing Snape’s punishment essay than sitting here trying to find meaning in a lot of made-up dreams.

  It seemed, however, that he was not the only person in Divination who was in a temper. Professor Trelawney slammed a copy of the Oracle down on the table between Harry and Ron and swept away, her lips pursed; she threw the next copy of the Oracle at Seamus and Dean, narrowly avoiding Seamus’s head, and thrust the final one into Neville’s chest with such force that he slipped off his pouffe.

  “Well, carry on!” said Professor Trelawney loudly, her voice high-pitched and somewhat hysterical, “you know what to do! Or am I such a sub-standard teacher that you have never learned how to open a book?”

  The class stared perplexedly at her, then at each other. Harry, however, thought he knew what was the matter. As Professor Trelawney flounced back to the high-backed teacher’s chair, her magnified eyes full of angry tears, he leaned his head closer to Ron’s and muttered, “I think she’s got the results of her inspection back.”

  “Professor?” said Parvati Patil in a hushed voice (she and Lavender had always rather admired Professor Trelawney). “Professor, is there anything—er—wrong?”

  “Wrong!” cried Professor Trelawney in a voice throbbing with emotion. “Certainly not! I have been insulted, certainly… insinuations have been made against me… unfounded accusations levelled… but no, there is nothing wrong, certainly not!”

  She took a great shuddering breath and looked away from Parvati, angry tears spilling from under her glasses.

  “I say nothing,” she choked, “of sixteen years of devoted service… it has passed, apparently, unnoticed… but I shall not be insulted, no, I shall not!”

  “But, Professor, who’s insulting you?” asked Parvati timidly.

  “The Establishment!” said Professor Trelawney, in a deep, dramatic, wavering voice. “Yes, those with eyes too clouded by the mundane to See as I See, to Know as I Know… of course, we Seers have always been feared, always persecuted… it is—alas—our fate.”

  She gulped, dabbed at her wet cheeks with the end of her shawl, then she pulled a small embroidered handkerchief from her sleeve, and blew her nose very hard with a sound like Peeves blowing a raspberry.

  Ron sniggered. Lavender shot him a disgusted look.

  “Professor,” said Parvati, “do you mean… is it something Professor Umbridge—?”

  “Do not speak to me about that woman!” cried Professor Trelawney, leaping to her feet, her beads rattling and her spectacles flashing. “Kindly continue with your work!”

  And she spent the rest of the lesson striding among them, tears still leaking from behind her glasses, muttering what sounded like threats under her breath.

  “…may well choose to leave… the indignity of it… on probation… we shall see… how she dares…”

  “You and Umbridge have got something in common,” Harry told Hermione quietly when they met again in Defence Against the Dark Arts. “She obviously reckons Trelawney’s an old fraud, too… looks like she’s put her on probation.”

  Umbridge entered the room as he spoke, wearing her black velvet bow and an expression of great smugness.

  “Good afternoon, class.”

  “Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge,” they chanted dully.

  “Wands away, please.”

  But there was no answering flurry of movement this time; nobody had bothered to take out their wands.

  “Please turn to page thirty-four of Defensive Magical Theory and read the third chapter, entitled ‘The Case for Non-Offensive Responses to Magical Attack.’ There will be—”

  “—no need to talk,” Harry, Ron and Hermione said together, under their breaths.

  * * *

  “No Quidditch practice,” said Angelina in hollow tones when Harry, Ron and Hermione entered the common room after dinner that night.

  “But I kept my temper!” said Harry, horrified. “I didn’t say anything to her, Angelina, I swear, I—”

  “I know, I know,” said Angelina miserably. “She just said she needed a bit of time to consider.”

  “Consider what?” said Ron angrily. “She’s given the Slytherins permission, why not us?”

  But Harry could imagine how much Umbridge was enjoying holding the threat of no Gryffindor Quidditch team over their heads and could easily understand why she would not want to relinquish that weapon over them too soon.

  “Well,” said Hermione, “look on the bright side—at least now you’ll have time to do Snape’s essay!”

  “That’s a bright side, is it?” snapped Harry, while Ron stared incredulously at Hermione. “No Quidditch practice, and extra Potions?”

  Harry slumped down into a chair, dragged his Potions essay reluctantly from his bag and set to work. It was very hard to concentrate; even though he knew Sirius was not due in the fire until much later, he could not help glancing into the flames every few minutes just in case. There was also an incredible amount of noise in the room: Fred and George appeared finally to have perfected one type of Skiving Snackbox, which they were taking turns to demonstrate to a cheering and whooping crowd.

  First, Fred would take a bite out of the orange end of a chew, at which he would vomit spectacularly into a bucket they had placed in front of them. Then he would force down the purple end of the chew, at which the vomiting would immediately cease. Lee Jordan, who was assisting the demonstration, was lazily Vanishing the vomit at regular intervals with the same Vanishing Spell Snape kept using on Harry’s potions.

  What with the regular sounds of retching, cheering and the sound of Fred and George taking advance orders from the crowd, Harry was finding it exceptionally difficult to focus on the correct method for Strengthening Solution. Hermione was not helping matters; the cheers and the sound of vomit hitting the bottom of Fred and George’s bucket were punctuated by her loud and disapproving sniffs, which Harry found, if anything, more distracting.

  “Just go and stop them, then!” he said irritably, after crossing out the wrong weight of powdered griffin claw for the fourth time.

  “I can’t, they’re not technically doing anything wrong,” said Hermione through gritted teeth. “They’re quite within their rights to eat the foul things themselves and I can’t find a rule that says the other idiots aren’t entitled to buy them, not unless they’re proven to be dangerous in some way and it doesn’t look as though they are.”

  She, Harry and Ron watched George projectile-vomit into the bucket, gulp down the rest of the chew and straighten up, beaming with his arms wide to protracted applause.

  “You know, I don’t get why Fred and George only got three O.W.L.s each,” said Harry, watching as Fred, George and Lee collected gold from the eager crowd. “They really know their stuff.”

  “Oh, they only know flashy stuff that’s of no real use to anyone,” said Hermione disparagingly.

  “No real use?” said Ron in a strained voice. “Hermione, they’ve made about twenty-six Galleons already.”

  It was a long while before the crowd around the Weasley twins dispersed, then Fred, Lee and George sat up counting their takings even longer, so it was well past midnight when Harry, Ron and Hermione finally had the common room to themselves. At long last, Fred had closed the doorway to the boys’ dormitories behind him, rattling his box of Galleons ostentatiously so that Hermione scowled. Harry, who was making very little progress with his Potions essay, decided to give it up for the night. As he put his books away, Ron, who was dozing lightly in an armchair, gave a muffled grunt, awoke, and looked blearily into the fire.

  “Sirius!” he said.

  Harry whipped round. Sirius’s untidy dark head was sitting in the fire again.

  “Hi,” he said, grinning.

  “Hi,” chorused Harry, Ron and Hermione, all three kneeling down on the hearthrug. Crookshanks purred loudly and approached the fire, trying, despite the heat, to put his face close to Sirius’s.

  “How’re things?” said Sirius.

  “Not that good,” said Harry, as Hermione pulled Crookshanks back to stop him singeing his whiskers. “The Ministry’s forced through another decree, which means we’re not allowed to have Quidditch teams—”

  “Or secret Defence Against the Dark Arts groups?” said Sirius.

  There was a short pause.

  “How did you know about that?” Harry demanded.

  “You want to choose your meeting places more carefully,” said Sirius, grinning still more broadly. “The Hog’s Head, I ask you.”

  “Well, it was better than the Three Broomsticks!” said Hermione defensively. “That’s always packed with people—”

  “Which means you’d have been harder to overhear,” said Sirius. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Hermione.”

  “Who overheard us?” Harry demanded.

  “Mundungus, of course,” said Sirius, and when they all looked puzzled he laughed. “He was the witch under the veil.”

  “That was Mundungus?” Harry said, stunned. “What was he doing in the Hog’s Head?”

  “What do you think he was doing?” said Sirius impatiently. “Keeping an eye on you, of course.”

  “I’m still being followed?” asked Harry angrily.

  “Yeah, you are,” said Sirius, “and just as well, isn’t it, if the first thing you’re going to do on your weekend off is organise an illegal defence group.”

  But he looked neither angry nor worried. On the contrary, he was looking at Harry with distinct pride.

  “Why was Dung hiding from us?” asked Ron, sounding disappointed. “We’d’ve liked to’ve seen him.”

  “He was banned from the Hog’s Head twenty years ago,” said Sirius, “and that barman’s got a long memory. We lost Moody’s spare Invisibility Cloak when Sturgis was arrested, so Dung’s been dressing as a witch a lot lately… anyway… first of all, Ron—I’ve sworn to pass on a message from your mother.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Ron, sounding apprehensive.

  “She says on no account whatsoever are you to take part in an illegal secret Defence Against the Dark Arts group. She says you’ll be expelled for sure and your future will be ruined. She says there will be plenty of time to learn how to defend yourself later and that you are too young to be worrying about that right now. She also” (Sirius’s eyes turned to the other two) “advises Harry and Hermione not to proceed with the group, though she accepts that she has no authority over either of them and simply begs them to remember that she has their best interests at heart. She would have written all this to you, but if the owl had been intercepted you’d all have been in real trouble, and she can’t say it for herself because she’s on duty tonight.”

  “On duty doing what?” said Ron quickly.

  “Never you mind, just stuff for the Order,” said Sirius. “So it’s fallen to me to be the messenger and make sure you tell her I passed it all on, because I don’t think she trusts me to.”

  There was another pause in which Crookshanks, mewing, attempted to paw Sirius’s head, and Ron fiddled with a hole in the hearthrug.

  “So, you want me to say I’m not going to take part in the Defence group?” he muttered finally.

  “Me? Certainly not!” said Sirius, looking surprised. “I think it’s an excellent idea!”

  “You do?” said Harry, his heart lifting.

  “Of course I do!” said Sirius. “D’you think your father and I would’ve lain down and taken orders from an old hag like Umbridge?”

  “But—last term all you did was tell me to be careful and not take risks—”

  “Last year, all the evidence was that someone inside Hogwarts was trying to kill you, Harry!” said Sirius impatiently. “This year, we know there’s someone outside Hogwarts who’d like to kill us all, so I think learning to defend yourselves properly is a very good idea!”

  “And if we do get expelled?” Hermione asked, a quizzical look on her face.

  “Hermione, this whole thing was your idea!” said Harry, staring at her.

  “I know it was. I just wondered what Sirius thought,” she said, shrugging.

  “Well, better expelled and able to defend yourselves than sitting safely in school without a clue,” said Sirius.

  “Hear, hear,” said Harry and Ron enthusiastically.

  “So,” said Sirius, “how are you organising this group? Where are you meeting?”

  “Well, that’s a bit of a problem now,” said Harry. “Dunno where we’re going to be able to go.”

  “How about the Shrieking Shack?” suggested Sirius.

  “Hey, that’s an idea!” said Ron excitedly, but Hermione made a sceptical noise and all three of them looked at her, Sirius’s head turning in the flames.

  “Well, Sirius, it’s just that there were only four of you meeting in the Shrieking Shack when you were at school,” said Hermione, “and all of you could transform into animals and I suppose you could all have squeezed under a single Invisibility Cloak if you’d wanted to. But there are twenty-eight of us and none of us is an Animagus, so we wouldn’t need so much an Invisibility Cloak as an Invisibility Marquee—”

  “Fair point,” said Sirius, looking slightly crestfallen. “Well, I’m sure you’ll come up with somewhere. There used to be a pretty roomy secret passageway behind that big mirror on the fourth floor, you might have enough space to practise jinxes in there.”

  “Fred and George told me it’s blocked,” said Harry, shaking his head. “Caved in or something.”

  “Oh…” said Sirius, frowning. “Well, I’ll have a think and get back to—”

  He broke off. His face was suddenly tense, alarmed. He turned sideways, apparently looking into the solid brick wall of the fireplace.

  “Sirius?” said Harry anxiously.

  But he had vanished. Harry gaped at the flames for a moment, then turned to look at Ron and Hermione.

  “Why did he—?”

  Hermione gave a horrified gasp and leapt to her feet, still staring at the fire.

  A hand had appeared amongst the flames, groping as though to catch hold of something; a stubby, short-fingered hand covered in ugly old-fashioned rings.

  The three of them ran for it. At the door of the boys’ dormitory Harry looked back. Umbridge’s hand was still making snatching movements amongst the flames, as though she knew exactly where Sirius’s hair had been moments before and was determined to seize it.

  18. DUMBLEDORE’S ARMY

  “Umbridge has been reading your mail, Harry. There’s no other explanation.”

  “You think Umbridge attacked Hedwig?” he said, outraged.

  “I’m almost certain of it,” said Hermione grimly. “Watch your frog, it’s escaping.”

  Harry pointed his wand at the bullfrog that had been hopping hopefully towards the other side of the table—“Accio!”—and it zoomed gloomily back into his hand.

  Charms was always one of the best lessons in which to enjoy a private chat; there was generally so much movement and activity that the danger of being overheard was very slight. Today, with the room full of croaking bullfrogs and cawing ravens, and with a heavy downpour of rain clattering and pounding against the classroom windows, Harry, Ron and Hermione’s whispered discussion about how Umbridge had nearly caught Sirius went quite unnoticed.

  “I’ve been suspecting this ever since Filch accused you of ordering Dungbombs, because it seemed such a stupid lie,” Hermione whispered. “I mean, once your letter had been read it would have been quite clear you weren’t ordering them, so you wouldn’t have been in trouble at all—it’s a bit of a feeble joke, isn’t it? But then I thought, what if somebody just wanted an excuse to read your mail? Well then, it would be a perfect way for Umbridge to manage it—tip off Filch, let him do the dirty work and confiscate the letter, then either find a way of stealing it from him or else demand to see it—I don’t think Filch would object, when’s he ever stuck up for a student’s rights? Harry, you’re squashing your frog.”

  Harry looked down; he was indeed squeezing his bullfrog so tightly its eyes were popping; he replaced it hastily upon the desk.

  “It was a very, very close call last night,” said Hermione. “I just wonder if Umbridge knows how close it was. Silencio.”

  The bullfrog on which she was practising her Silencing Charm was struck dumb mid-croak and glared at her reproachfully.

  “If she’d caught Snuffles—”

  Harry finished the sentence for her.

  “—He’d probably be back in Azkaban this morning.” He waved his wand without really concentrating; his bullfrog swelled like a green balloon and emitted a high-pitched whistle.

  “Silencio!” said Hermione hastily, pointing her wand at Harry’s frog, which deflated silently before them. “Well, he mustn’t do it again, that’s all. I just don’t know how we’re going to let him know. We can’t send him an owl.”