“Don’t Stun them, Filch!” shouted Umbridge angrily, for all the world as though it had been his incantation.

  “Right you are, Headmistress!” wheezed Filch, who as a Squib could no more have Stunned the fireworks than swallowed them. He dashed to a nearby cupboard, pulled out a broom and began swatting at the fireworks in midair; within seconds the head of the broom was ablaze.

  Harry had seen enough; laughing, he ducked down low, ran to a door he knew was concealed behind a tapestry a little way along the corridor and slipped through it to find Fred and George hiding just behind it, listening to Umbridge and Filch’s yells and quaking with suppressed mirth.

  “Impressive,” Harry said quietly, grinning. “Very impressive… you’ll put Dr. Filibuster out of business, no problem…”

  “Cheers,” whispered George, wiping tears of laughter from his face. “Oh, I hope she tries Vanishing them next… they multiply by ten every time you try.”

  The fireworks continued to burn and to spread all over the school that afternoon. Though they caused plenty of disruption, particularly the firecrackers, the other teachers didn’t seem to mind them very much.

  “Dear, dear,” said Professor McGonagall sardonically, as one of the dragons soared around her classroom, emitting loud bangs and exhaling flame. “Miss Brown, would you mind running along to the Headmistress and informing her that we have an escaped firework in our classroom?”

  The upshot of it all was that Professor Umbridge spent her first afternoon as Headmistress running all over the school answering the summonses of the other teachers, none of whom seemed able to rid their rooms of the fireworks without her. When the final bell rang and they were heading back to Gryffindor Tower with their bags, Harry saw, with immense satisfaction, a dishevelled and soot-blackened Umbridge tottering sweaty-faced from Professor Flitwick’s classroom.

  “Thank you so much, Professor!” said Professor Flitwick in his squeaky little voice. “I could have got rid of the sparklers myself, of course, but I wasn’t sure whether or not I had the authority.”

  Beaming, he closed his classroom door in her snarling face.

  Fred and George were heroes that night in the Gryffindor common room. Even Hermione fought her way through the excited crowd to congratulate them.

  “They were wonderful fireworks,” she said admiringly.

  “Thanks,” said George, looking both surprised and pleased. “Weasleys’ Wildfire Whiz-bangs. Only thing is, we used our whole stock; we’re going to have to start again from scratch now.”

  “It was worth it, though,” said Fred, who was taking orders from clamouring Gryffindors. “If you want to add your name to the waiting list, Hermione, it’s five Galleons for your Basic Blaze box and twenty for the Deflagration Deluxe…”

  Hermione returned to the table where Harry and Ron were sitting staring at their schoolbags as though hoping their homework would spring out and start doing itself.

  “Oh, why don’t we have a night off?” said Hermione brightly, as a silver-tailed Weasley rocket zoomed past the window. “After all, the Easter holidays start on Friday, we’ll have plenty of time then.”

  “Are you feeling all right?” Ron asked, staring at her in disbelief.

  “Now you mention it,” said Hermione happily, “d’you know… I think I’m feeling a bit… rebellious.”

  Harry could still hear the distant bangs of escaped firecrackers when he and Ron went up to bed an hour later; and as he got undressed a sparkler floated past the tower, still resolutely spelling out the word “TOO.”

  He got into bed, yawning. With his glasses off, the occasional firework passing the window had become blurred, looking like sparkling clouds, beautiful and mysterious against the black sky. He turned on to his side, wondering how Umbridge was feeling about her first day in Dumbledore’s job, and how Fudge would react when he heard that the school had spent most of the day in a state of advanced disruption. Smiling to himself, Harry closed his eyes…

  The whizzes and bangs of escaped fireworks in the grounds seemed to be growing more distant… or perhaps he was simply speeding away from them…

  He had fallen right into the corridor leading to the Department of Mysteries. He was speeding towards the plain black door… let it open… let it open…

  It did. He was inside the circular room lined with doors… he crossed it, placed his hand on an identical door and it swung inwards…

  Now he was in a long, rectangular room full of an odd mechanical clicking. There were dancing flecks of light on the walls but he did not pause to investigate… he had to go on…

  There was a door at the far end… it, too, opened at his touch…

  And now he was in a dimly lit room as high and wide as a church, full of nothing but rows and rows of towering shelves, each laden with small, dusty, spun-glass spheres… now Harry’s heart was beating fast with excitement… he knew where to go… he ran forwards, but his footsteps made no noise in the enormous, deserted room…

  There was something in this room he wanted very, very much…

  Something he wanted… or somebody else wanted…

  His scar was hurting…

  BANG!

  Harry awoke instantly, confused and angry. The dark dormitory was full of the sound of laughter.

  “Cool!” said Seamus, who was silhouetted against the window. “I think one of those Catherine wheels hit a rocket and it’s like they mated, come and see!”

  Harry heard Ron and Dean scramble out of bed for a better look. He lay quite still and silent while the pain in his scar subsided and disappointment washed over him. He felt as though a wonderful treat had been snatched from him at the very last moment… he had got so close that time.

  Glittering pink and silver winged piglets were now soaring past the windows of Gryffindor Tower. Harry lay and listened to the appreciative whoops of Gryffindors in the dormitories below them. His stomach gave a sickening jolt as he remembered that he had Occlumency the following evening.

  * * *

  Harry spent the whole of the next day dreading what Snape was going to say if he found out how much further into the Department of Mysteries Harry had penetrated during his last dream. With a surge of guilt he realised that he had not practised Occlumency once since their last lesson: there had been too much going on since Dumbledore had left; he was sure he would not have been able to empty his mind even if he had tried. He doubted, however, whether Snape would accept that excuse.

  He attempted a little last-minute practice during classes that day, but it was no good. Hermione kept asking him what was wrong whenever he fell silent trying to rid himself of all thought and emotion and, after all, the best moment to empty his brain was not while teachers were firing revision questions at the class.

  Resigned to the worst, he set off for Snape’s office after dinner. Halfway across the Entrance Hall, however, Cho came hurrying up to him.

  “Over here,” said Harry, glad of a reason to postpone his meeting with Snape, and beckoning her across to the corner of the Entrance Hall where the giant hour-glasses stood. Gryffindor’s was now almost empty. “Are you OK? Umbridge hasn’t been asking you about the D.A., has she?”

  “Oh, no,” said Cho hurriedly. “No, it was only… well, I just wanted to say… Harry, I never dreamed Marietta would tell…”

  “Yeah, well,” said Harry moodily. He did feel Cho might have chosen her friends a bit more carefully; it was small consolation that the last he had heard, Marietta was still up in the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey had not been able to make the slightest improvement to her pimples.

  “She’s a lovely person really,” said Cho. “She just made a mistake—”

  Harry looked at her incredulously.

  “A lovely person who made a mistake? She sold us all out, including you!”

  “Well… we all got away, didn’t we?” said Cho pleadingly. “You know, her mum works for the Ministry, it’s really difficult for her—”

  “Ron’s dad works for the Ministry too!” Harry said furiously. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, he hasn’t got sneak written across his face—”

  “That was a really horrible trick of Hermione Granger’s,” said Cho fiercely. “She should have told us she’d jinxed that list—”

  “I think it was a brilliant idea,” said Harry coldly. Cho flushed and her eyes grew brighter.

  “Oh yes, I forgot—of course, if it was darling Hermione’s idea—”

  “Don’t start crying again,” said Harry warningly.

  “I wasn’t going to!” she shouted.

  “Yeah… well… good,” he said. “I’ve got enough to cope with at the moment.”

  “Go and cope with it then!” Cho said furiously, turning on her heel and stalking off.

  Fuming, Harry descended the stairs to Snape’s dungeon and, though he knew from experience how much easier it would be for Snape to penetrate his mind if he arrived angry and resentful, he succeeded in nothing but thinking of a few more things he should have said to Cho about Marietta before reaching the dungeon door.

  “You’re late, Potter,” said Snape coldly, as Harry closed the door behind him.

  Snape was standing with his back to Harry, removing, as usual, certain of his thoughts and placing them carefully in Dumbledore’s Pensieve. He dropped the last silvery strand into the stone basin and turned to face Harry.

  “So,” he said. “Have you been practising?”

  “Yes,” Harry lied, looking carefully at one of the legs of Snape’s desk.

  “Well, we’ll soon find out, won’t we?” said Snape smoothly. “Wand out, Potter.”

  Harry moved into his usual position, facing Snape with the desk between them. His heart was pumping fast with anger at Cho and anxiety about how much Snape was about to extract from his mind.

  “On the count of three then,” said Snape lazily. “One—two—”

  Snape’s office door banged open and Draco Malfoy sped in.

  “Professor Snape, sir—oh—sorry—”

  Malfoy was looking at Snape and Harry in some surprise.

  “It’s all right, Draco,” said Snape, lowering his wand. “Potter is here for a little remedial Potions.”

  Harry had not seen Malfoy look so gleeful since Umbridge had turned up to inspect Hagrid.

  “I didn’t know,” he said, leering at Harry, who knew his face was burning. He would have given a great deal to be able to shout the truth at Malfoy—or, even better, to hit him with a good curse.

  “Well, Draco, what is it?” asked Snape.

  “It’s Professor Umbridge, sir—she needs your help,” said Malfoy.

  “They’ve found Montague, sir, he’s turned up jammed inside a toilet on the fourth floor.”

  “How did he get in there?” demanded Snape.

  “I don’t know, sir, he’s a bit confused.”

  “Very well, very well, Potter,” said Snape, “we shall resume this lesson tomorrow evening.”

  He turned and swept from his office. Malfoy mouthed, “Remedial Potions?” at Harry behind Snape’s back before following him.

  Seething, Harry replaced his wand inside his robes and made to leave the room. At least he had twenty-four more hours in which to practise; he knew he ought to feel grateful for the narrow escape, though it was hard that it came at the expense of Malfoy telling the whole school that he needed remedial Potions.

  He was at the office door when he saw it: a patch of shivering light dancing on the doorframe. He stopped, and stood looking at it, reminded of something… then he remembered: it was a little like the lights he had seen in his dream last night, the lights in the second room he had walked through on his journey through the Department of Mysteries.

  He turned around. The light was coming from the Pensieve sitting on Snape’s desk. The silver-white contents were ebbing and swirling within. Snape’s thoughts… things he did not want Harry to see if he broke through Snape’s defences accidentally…

  Harry gazed at the Pensieve, curiosity welling inside him… what was it that Snape was so keen to hide from Harry?

  The silvery lights shivered on the wall… Harry took two steps towards the desk, thinking hard. Could it possibly be information about the Department of Mysteries that Snape was determined to keep from him?

  Harry looked over his shoulder, his heart now pumping harder and faster than ever. How long would it take Snape to release Montague from the toilet? Would he come straight back to his office afterwards, or accompany Montague to the hospital wing? Surely the latter… Montague was Captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, Snape would want to make sure he was all right.

  Harry walked the remaining few feet to the Pensieve and stood over it, gazing into its depths. He hesitated, listening, then pulled out his wand again. The office and the corridor beyond were completely silent. He gave the contents of the Pensieve a small prod with the end of his wand.

  The silvery stuff within began to swirl very fast. Harry leaned forwards over it and saw that it had become transparent. He was, once again, looking down into a room as though through a circular window in the ceiling… in fact, unless he was much mistaken, he was looking down into the Great Hall.

  His breath was actually fogging the surface of Snape’s thoughts… his brain seemed to be in limbo… it would be insane to do the thing he was so strongly tempted to do… he was trembling… Snape could be back at any moment… but Harry thought of Cho’s anger, of Malfoy’s jeering face, and a reckless daring seized him.

  He took a great gulp of breath, and plunged his face into the surface of Snape’s thoughts. At once, the floor of the office lurched, tipping Harry head-first into the Pensieve…

  He was falling through cold blackness, spinning furiously as he went, and then—

  He was standing in the middle of the Great Hall, but the four house tables were gone. Instead, there were more than a hundred smaller tables, all facing the same way, at each of which sat a student, head bent low, scribbling on a roll of parchment. The only sound was the scratching of quills and the occasional rustle as somebody adjusted their parchment. It was clearly exam time.

  Sunshine was streaming through the high windows on to the bent heads, which shone chestnut and copper and gold in the bright light. Harry looked around carefully. Snape had to be here somewhere… this was his memory…

  And there he was, at a table right behind Harry. Harry stared. Snape-the-teenager had a stringy, pallid look about him, like a plant kept in the dark. His hair was lank and greasy and was flopping on to the table, his hooked nose barely half an inch from the surface of the parchment as he scribbled. Harry moved around behind Snape and read the heading of the examination paper: DEFENCE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS—ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVEL.

  So Snape had to be fifteen or sixteen, around Harry’s own age. His hand was flying across the parchment; he had written at least a foot more than his closest neighbours, and yet his writing was minuscule and cramped.

  “Five more minutes!”

  The voice made Harry jump. Turning, he saw the top of Professor Flitwick’s head moving between the desks a short distance away. Professor Flitwick was walking past a boy with untidy black hair… very untidy black hair…

  Harry moved so quickly that, had he been solid, he would have knocked desks flying. Instead he seemed to slide, dreamlike, across two aisles and up a third. The back of the black-haired boy’s head drew nearer and… he was straightening up now, putting down his quill, pulling his roll of parchment towards him so as to reread what he had written…

  Harry stopped in front of the desk and gazed down at his fifteen-year-old father.

  Excitement exploded in the pit of his stomach: it was as though he was looking at himself but with deliberate mistakes. James’s eyes were hazel, his nose was slightly longer than Harry’s and there was no scar on his forehead, but they had the same thin face, same mouth, same eyebrows; James’s hair stuck up at the back exactly as Harry’s did, his hands could have been Harry’s and Harry could tell that, when James stood up, they would be within an inch of each other in height.

  James yawned hugely and rumpled up his hair, making it even messier than it had been. Then, with a glance towards Professor Flitwick, he turned in his seat and grinned at a boy sitting four seats behind him.

  With another shock of excitement, Harry saw Sirius give James the thumbs-up. Sirius was lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking; his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither James’s nor Harry’s could ever have achieved, and a girl sitting behind him was eyeing him hopefully, though he didn’t seem to have noticed. And two seats along from this girl—Harry’s stomach gave another pleasurable squirm—was Remus Lupin. He looked rather pale and peaky (was the full moon approaching?) and was absorbed in the exam: as he reread his answers, he scratched his chin with the end of his quill, frowning slightly.

  So that meant Wormtail had to be around here somewhere, too… and sure enough, Harry spotted him within seconds: a small, mousy-haired boy with a pointed nose. Wormtail looked anxious; he was chewing his fingernails, staring down at his paper, scuffing the ground with his toes. Every now and then he glanced hopefully at his neighbour’s paper. Harry stared at Wormtail for a moment, then back at James, who was now doodling on a bit of scrap parchment. He had drawn a Snitch and was now tracing the letters “L.E.” What did they stand for?

  “Quills down, please!” squeaked Professor Flitwick. “That means you too, Stebbins! Please remain seated while I collect your parchment! Accio!”

  Over a hundred rolls of parchment zoomed into the air and into Professor Flitwick’s outstretched arms, knocking him backwards off his feet. Several people laughed. A couple of students at the front desks got up, took hold of Professor Flitwick beneath the elbows and lifted him back on to his feet.

  “Thank you… thank you,” panted Professor Flitwick. “Very well, everybody, you’re free to go!”

  Harry looked down at his father, who had hastily crossed out the “L.E.” he had been embellishing, jumped to his feet, stuffed his quill and the exam paper into his bag, which he slung over his back, and stood waiting for Sirius to join him.