The Order of the Phoenix Read online

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, grinning. ‘You kept blocking me.’

  ‘And Wood told you not to be a gentleman and knock me off my broom if you had to,’ said Cho, smiling reminiscently. ‘I heard he got taken on by Pride of Portree, is that right?’

  ‘Nah, it was Puddlemere United; I saw him at the World Cup last year.’

  ‘Oh, I saw you there, too, remember? We were on the same campsite. It was really good, wasn’t it?’

  The subject of the Quidditch World Cup carried them all the way down the drive and out through the gates. Harry could hardly believe how easy it was to talk to her – no more difficult, in fact, than talking to Ron and Hermione – and he was just starting to feel confident and cheerful when a large gang of Slytherin girls passed them, including Pansy Parkinson.

  ‘Potter and Chang!’ screeched Pansy, to a chorus of snide giggles. ‘Urgh, Chang, I don’t think much of your taste … at least Diggory was good-looking!’

  The girls sped up, talking and shrieking in a pointed fashion with many exaggerated glances back at Harry and Cho, leaving an embarrassed silence in their wake. Harry could think of nothing else to say about Quidditch, and Cho, slightly flushed, was watching her feet.

  ‘So … where d’you want to go?’ Harry asked as they entered Hogsmeade. The High Street was full of students ambling up and down, peering into the shop windows and messing about together on the pavements.

  ‘Oh … I don’t mind,’ said Cho, shrugging. ‘Um … shall we just have a look in the shops or something?’

  They wandered towards Dervish and Banges. A large poster had been stuck up in the window and a few Hogsmeaders were looking at it. They moved aside when Harry and Cho approached and Harry found himself staring once more at the pictures of the ten escaped Death Eaters. The poster, ‘By Order of the Ministry of Magic’, offered a thousand-Galleon reward to any witch or wizard with information leading to the recapture of any of the convicts pictured.

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it,’ said Cho in a low voice, gazing up at the pictures of the Death Eaters, ‘remember when that Sirius Black escaped, and there were Dementors all over Hogsmeade looking for him? And now ten Death Eaters are on the loose and there are no Dementors anywhere …’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, tearing his eyes away from Bellatrix Lestrange’s face to glance up and down the High Street. ‘Yeah, that is weird.’

  He wasn’t sorry that there were no Dementors nearby, but now he came to think of it, their absence was highly significant. They had not only let the Death Eaters escape, they weren’t bothering to look for them … it looked as though they really were outside Ministry control now.

  The ten escaped Death Eaters were staring out of every shop window he and Cho passed. It started to rain as they passed Scrivenshaft’s; cold, heavy drops of water kept hitting Harry’s face and the back of his neck.

  ‘Um … d’you want to get a coffee?’ said Cho tentatively, as the rain began to fall more heavily.

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Harry, looking around. ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, there’s a really nice place just up here; haven’t you ever been to Madam Puddifoot’s?’ she said brightly, leading him up a side road and into a small teashop that Harry had never noticed before. It was a cramped, steamy little place where everything seemed to have been decorated with frills or bows. Harry was reminded unpleasantly of Umbridge’s office.

  ‘Cute, isn’t it?’ said Cho happily.

  ‘Er … yeah,’ said Harry untruthfully.

  ‘Look, she’s decorated it for Valentine’s Day!’ said Cho, indicating a number of golden cherubs that were hovering over each of the small, circular tables, occasionally throwing pink confetti over the occupants.

  ‘Aaah …’

  They sat down at the last remaining table, which was over by the steamy window. Roger Davies, the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain, was sitting about a foot and a half away with a pretty blonde girl. They were holding hands. The sight made Harry feel uncomfortable, particularly when, looking around the teashop, he saw that it was full of nothing but couples, all of them holding hands. Perhaps Cho would expect him to hold her hand.

  ‘What can I get you, m’dears?’ said Madam Puddifoot, a very stout woman with a shiny black bun, squeezing between their table and Roger Davies’s with great difficulty.

  ‘Two coffees, please,’ said Cho.

  In the time it took for their coffees to arrive, Roger Davies and his girlfriend had started kissing over their sugar bowl. Harry wished they wouldn’t; he felt that Davies was setting a standard with which Cho would soon expect him to compete. He felt his face growing hot and tried staring out of the window, but it was so steamed up he couldn’t see the street outside. To postpone the moment when he would have to look at Cho, he stared up at the ceiling as though examining the paintwork and received a handful of confetti in the face from their hovering cherub.

  After a few more painful minutes, Cho mentioned Umbridge. Harry seized on the subject with relief and they passed a few happy moments abusing her, but the subject had already been so thoroughly canvassed during DA meetings it did not last very long. Silence fell again. Harry was very conscious of the slurping noises coming from the table next door and cast wildly around for something else to say.

  ‘Er … listen, d’you want to come with me to the Three Broomsticks at lunchtime? I’m meeting Hermione Granger there.’

  Cho raised her eyebrows.

  ‘You’re meeting Hermione Granger? Today?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, she asked me to, so I thought I would. D’you want to come with me? She said it wouldn’t matter if you did.’

  ‘Oh … well … that was nice of her.’

  But Cho did not sound as though she thought it was nice at all. On the contrary, her tone was cold and all of a sudden she looked rather forbidding.

  A few more minutes passed in total silence, Harry drinking his coffee so fast that he would soon need a fresh cup. Beside them, Roger Davies and his girlfriend seemed glued together at the lips.

  Cho’s hand was lying on the table beside her coffee and Harry was feeling a mounting pressure to take hold of it. Just do it, he told himself, as a fount of mingled panic and excitement surged up inside his chest, just reach out and grab it. Amazing, how much more difficult it was to extend his arm twelve inches and touch her hand than it was to snatch a speeding Snitch from midair …

  But just as he moved his hand forwards, Cho took hers off the table. She was now watching Roger Davies kissing his girlfriend with a mildly interested expression.

  ‘He asked me out, you know,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘A couple of weeks ago. Roger. I turned him down, though.’

  Harry, who had grabbed the sugar bowl to excuse his sudden lunging movement across the table, could not think why she was telling him this. If she wished she were sitting at the next table being heartily kissed by Roger Davies, why had she agreed to come out with him?

  He said nothing. Their cherub threw another handful of confetti over them; some of it landed in the last cold dregs of coffee Harry had been about to drink.

  ‘I came in here with Cedric last year,’ said Cho.

  In the second or so it took for him to take in what she had said, Harry’s insides had become glacial. He could not believe she wanted to talk about Cedric now, while kissing couples surrounded them and a cherub floated over their heads.

  Cho’s voice was rather higher when she spoke again.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages … did Cedric – did he – m – m – mention me at all before he died?’ This was the very last subject on earth Harry wanted to discuss, and least of all with Cho.

  ‘Well – no –’ he said quietly. ‘There – there wasn’t time for him to say anything. Erm … so … d’you … d’you get to see a lot of Quidditch in the holidays? You support the Tornados, right?’

  His voice sounded falsely bright and cheery. To his horror, he saw that her eyes were swimming with tears again, just as they had been after
the last DA meeting before Christmas.

  ‘Look,’ he said desperately, leaning in so that nobody else could overhear, ‘let’s not talk about Cedric right now … let’s talk about something else …’

  But this, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say.

  ‘I thought,’ she said, tears spattering down on to the table, ‘I thought you’d u – u – understand! I need to talk about it! Surely you n – need to talk about it t – too! I mean, you saw it happen, d – didn’t you?’

  Everything was going nightmarishly wrong; Roger Davies’s girlfriend had even unglued herself to look round at Cho crying.

  ‘Well – I have talked about it,’ Harry said in a whisper, ‘to Ron and Hermione, but –’

  ‘Oh, you’ll talk to Hermione Granger!’ she said shrilly, her face now shining with tears. Several more kissing couples broke apart to stare. ‘But you won’t talk to me! P – perhaps it would be best if we just … just p – paid and you went and met up with Hermione G – Granger, like you obviously want to!’

  Harry stared at her, utterly bewildered, as she seized a frilly napkin and dabbed at her shining face with it.

  ‘Cho?’ he said weakly, wishing Roger would seize his girlfriend and start kissing her again to stop her goggling at him and Cho.

  ‘Go on, leave!’ she said, now crying into the napkin. ‘I don’t know why you asked me out in the first place if you’re going to make arrangements to meet other girls right after me … how many are you meeting after Hermione?’

  ‘It’s not like that!’ said Harry, and he was so relieved at finally understanding what she was annoyed about that he laughed, which he realised a split second too late was also a mistake.

  Cho sprang to her feet. The whole tearoom was quiet and everybody was watching them now.

  ‘I’ll see you around, Harry,’ she said dramatically, and hiccoughing slightly she dashed to the door, wrenched it open and hurried off into the pouring rain.

  ‘Cho!’ Harry called after her, but the door had already swung shut behind her with a tuneful tinkle.

  There was total silence within the teashop. Every eye was on Harry. He threw a Galleon down on to the table, shook pink confetti out of his hair, and followed Cho out of the door.

  It was raining hard now and she was nowhere to be seen. He simply did not understand what had happened; half an hour ago they had been getting along fine.

  ‘Women!’ he muttered angrily, sloshing down the rain-washed street with his hands in his pockets. ‘What did she want to talk about Cedric for, anyway? Why does she always want to drag up a subject that makes her act like a human hosepipe?’

  He turned right and broke into a splashy run, and within minutes he was turning into the doorway of the Three Broomsticks. He knew he was too early to meet Hermione, but he thought it likely there would be someone in here with whom he could spend the intervening time. He shook his wet hair out of his eyes and looked around. Hagrid was sitting alone in a corner, looking morose.

  ‘Hi, Hagrid!’ he said, when he had squeezed through the crammed tables and pulled up a chair beside him.

  Hagrid jumped and looked down at Harry as though he barely recognised him. Harry saw that he had two fresh cuts on his face and several new bruises.

  ‘Oh, it’s yeh, Harry,’ said Hagrid. ‘Yeh all righ’?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ lied Harry; but, next to this battered and mournful-looking Hagrid, he felt he didn’t really have much to complain about. ‘Er – are you OK?’

  ‘Me?’ said Hagrid. ‘Oh yeah, I’m grand, Harry, grand.’

  He gazed into the depths of his pewter tankard, which was the size of a large bucket, and sighed. Harry didn’t know what to say to him. They sat side by side in silence for a moment. Then Hagrid said abruptly, ‘In the same boat, yeh an’ me, aren’ we, ’Arry?’

  ‘Er –’ said Harry.

  ‘Yeah … I’ve said it before … both outsiders, like,’ said Hagrid, nodding wisely. ‘An’ both orphans. Yeah … both orphans.’

  He took a great swig from his tankard.

  ‘Makes a diff’rence, havin’ a decent family,’ he said. ‘Me dad was decent. An’ your mum an’ dad were decent. If they’d lived, life woulda bin diff’rent, eh?’

  ‘Yeah … I s’pose,’ said Harry cautiously. Hagrid seemed to be in a very strange mood.

  ‘Family,’ said Hagrid gloomily. ‘Whatever yeh say, blood’s important …’

  And he wiped a trickle of it out of his eye.

  ‘Hagrid,’ said Harry, unable to stop himself, ‘where are you getting all these injuries?’

  ‘Eh?’ said Hagrid, looking startled. ‘Wha’ injuries?’

  ‘All those!’ said Harry, pointing at Hagrid’s face.

  ‘Oh … tha’s jus’ normal bumps an’ bruises, Harry,’ said Hagrid dismissively, ‘I got a rough job.’

  He drained his tankard, set it back on the table and got to his feet.

  ‘I’ll be seein’ yeh, Harry … take care now.’

  And he lumbered out of the pub looking wretched, and disappeared into the torrential rain. Harry watched him go, feeling miserable. Hagrid was unhappy and he was hiding something, but he seemed determined not to accept help. What was going on? But before Harry could think about it any further, he heard a voice calling his name.

  ‘Harry! Harry, over here!’

  Hermione was waving at him from the other side of the room. He got up and made his way towards her through the crowded pub. He was still a few tables away when he realised that Hermione was not alone. She was sitting at a table with the unlikeliest pair of drinking mates he could ever have imagined: Luna Lovegood and none other than Rita Skeeter, ex-journalist on the Daily Prophet and one of Hermione’s least favourite people in the world.

  ‘You’re early!’ said Hermione, moving along to give him room to sit down. ‘I thought you were with Cho, I wasn’t expecting you for another hour at least!’

  ‘Cho?’ said Rita at once, twisting round in her seat to stare avidly at Harry. ‘A girl?’

  She snatched up her crocodile-skin handbag and groped within it.

  ‘It’s none of your business if Harry’s been with a hundred girls,’ Hermione told Rita coolly. ‘So you can put that away right now.’

  Rita had been on the point of withdrawing an acid-green quill from her bag. Looking as though she had been forced to swallow Stinksap, she snapped her bag shut again.

  ‘What are you up to?’ Harry asked, sitting down and staring from Rita to Luna to Hermione.

  ‘Little Miss Perfect was just about to tell me when you arrived,’ said Rita, taking a large slurp of her drink. ‘I suppose I’m allowed to talk to him, am I?’ she shot at Hermione.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you are,’ said Hermione coldly.

  Unemployment did not suit Rita. The hair that had once been set in elaborate curls now hung lank and unkempt around her face. The scarlet paint on her two-inch talons was chipped and there were a couple of false jewels missing from her winged glasses. She took another great gulp of her drink and said out of the corner of her mouth, ‘Pretty girl, is she, Harry?’

  ‘One more word about Harry’s love life and the deal’s off and that’s a promise,’ said Hermione irritably.

  ‘What deal?’ said Rita, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. ‘You haven’t mentioned a deal yet, Miss Prissy, you just told me to turn up. Oh, one of these days …’ She took a deep shuddering breath.

  ‘Yes, yes, one of these days you’ll write more horrible stories about Harry and me,’ said Hermione indifferently. ‘Find someone who cares, why don’t you?’

  ‘They’ve run plenty of horrible stories about Harry this year without my help,’ said Rita, shooting a sideways look at him over the top of her glass and adding in a rough whisper, ‘How has that made you feel, Harry? Betrayed? Distraught? Misunderstood?’

  ‘He feels angry, of course,’ said Hermione in a hard, clear voice. ‘Because he’s told the Minister for Magic the truth and the Minis
ter’s too much of an idiot to believe him.’

  ‘So you actually stick to it, do you, that He Who Must Not Be Named is back?’ said Rita, lowering her glass and subjecting Harry to a piercing stare while her finger strayed longingly to the clasp of the crocodile bag. ‘You stand by all this garbage Dumbledore’s been telling everybody about You-Know-Who returning and you being the sole witness?’

  ‘I wasn’t the sole witness,’ snarled Harry. ‘There were a dozen-odd Death Eaters there as well. Want their names?’

  ‘I’d love them,’ breathed Rita, now fumbling in her bag once more and gazing at him as though he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. ‘A great bold headline: “Potter Accuses …” A sub-heading, “Harry Potter Names Death Eaters Still Among Us”. And then, beneath a nice big photograph of you, “Disturbed teenage survivor of You-Know-Who’s attack, Harry Potter, 15, caused outrage yesterday by accusing respectable and prominent members of the wizarding community of being Death Eaters …”’

  The Quick-Quotes Quill was actually in her hand and halfway to her mouth when the rapturous expression on her face died.

  ‘But of course,’ she said, lowering the quill and looking daggers at Hermione, ‘Little Miss Perfect wouldn’t want that story out there, would she?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Hermione sweetly, ‘that’s exactly what Little Miss Perfect does want.’

  Rita stared at her. So did Harry. Luna, on the other hand, sang ‘Weasley is our King’ dreamily under her breath and stirred her drink with a cocktail onion on a stick.

  ‘You want me to report what he says about He Who Must Not Be Named?’ Rita asked Hermione in a hushed voice.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Hermione. ‘The true story. All the facts. Exactly as Harry reports them. He’ll give you all the details, he’ll tell you the names of the undiscovered Death Eaters he saw there, he’ll tell you what Voldemort looks like now – oh, get a grip on yourself,’ she added contemptuously, throwing a napkin across the table, for, at the sound of Voldemort’s name, Rita had jumped so badly she had slopped half her glass of Firewhisky down herself.

  Rita blotted the front of her grubby raincoat, still staring at Hermione. Then she said baldly, ‘The Prophet wouldn’t print it. In case you haven’t noticed, nobody believes his cock-and-bull story. Everyone thinks he’s delusional. Now, if you let me write the story from that angle –’