The Order of the Phoenix Read online

  ‘I reckon it’s over, yeh know!’ said Hagrid, still squinting towards the stadium. ‘Look – there’s people comin’ out already – if yeh two hurry yeh’ll be able ter blend in with the crowd an’ no one’ll know yeh weren’t there!’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Harry. ‘Well … see you later, then, Hagrid.’

  ‘I don’t believe him,’ said Hermione in a very unsteady voice, the moment they were out of earshot of Hagrid. ‘I don’t believe him. I really don’t believe him.’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Harry.

  ‘Calm down!’ she said feverishly. ‘A giant! A giant in the Forest! And we’re supposed to give him English lessons! Always assuming, of course, we can get past the herd of murderous centaurs on the way in and out! I – don’t – believe – him!’

  ‘We haven’t got to do anything yet!’ Harry tried to reassure her in a quiet voice, as they joined a stream of jabbering Hufflepuffs heading back towards the castle. ‘He’s not asking us to do anything unless he gets chucked out and that might not even happen.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Harry!’ said Hermione angrily, stopping dead in her tracks so that the people behind had to swerve to avoid her. ‘Of course he’s going to be chucked out and, to be perfectly honest, after what we’ve just seen, who can blame Umbridge?’

  There was a pause in which Harry glared at her, and her eyes filled slowly with tears. ‘You didn’t mean that,’ said Harry quietly. ‘No … well … all right … I didn’t,’ she said, wiping her eyes angrily. ‘But why does he have to make life so difficult for himself – for us?’

  ‘I dunno –’

  ‘Weasley is our King,

  Weasley is our King,

  He didn’t let the Quaffle in,

  Weasley is our King …’

  ‘And I wish they’d stop singing that stupid song,’ said Hermione miserably, ‘haven’t they gloated enough?’

  A great tide of students was moving up the sloping lawns from the pitch.

  ‘Oh, let’s get in before we have to meet the Slytherins,’ said Hermione.

  ‘Weasley can save anything,

  He never leaves a single ring,

  That’s why Gryffindors all sing:

  Weasley is our King.’

  ‘Hermione …’ said Harry slowly.

  The song was growing louder, but it was issuing not from a crowd of green-and-silver-clad Slytherins, but from a mass of red and gold moving slowly towards the castle, bearing a solitary figure upon its many shoulders.

  ‘Weasley is our King,

  Weasley is our King,

  He didn’t let the Quaffle in,

  Weasley is our King …’

  ‘No?’ said Hermione in a hushed voice.

  ‘YES!’ said Harry loudly.

  ‘HARRY! HERMIONE!’ yelled Ron, waving the silver Quidditch cup in the air and looking quite beside himself. ‘WE DID IT! WE WON!’

  They beamed up at him as he passed. There was a scrum at the door of the castle and Ron’s head got rather badly bumped on the lintel, but nobody seemed to want to put him down. Still singing, the crowd squeezed itself into the Entrance Hall and out of sight. Harry and Hermione watched them go, beaming, until the last echoing strains of ‘Weasley is our King’ died away. Then they turned to each other, their smiles fading.

  ‘We’ll save our news till tomorrow, shall we?’ said Harry.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Hermione wearily. ‘I’m not in any hurry.’

  They climbed the steps together. At the front doors both instinctively looked back at the Forbidden Forest. Harry was not sure whether or not it was his imagination, but he rather thought he saw a small cloud of birds erupting into the air over the treetops in the distance, almost as though the tree in which they had been nesting had just been pulled up by the roots.

  — CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE —

  O.W.L.s

  Ron’s euphoria at helping Gryffindor scrape the Quidditch cup was such that he couldn’t settle to anything next day. All he wanted to do was talk over the match, so Harry and Hermione found it very difficult to find an opening in which to mention Grawp. Not that either of them tried very hard; neither was keen to be the one to bring Ron back to reality in quite such a brutal fashion. As it was another fine, warm day, they persuaded him to join them in revising under the beech tree at the edge of the lake, where they had less chance of being overheard than in the common room. Ron was not particularly keen on this idea at first – he was thoroughly enjoying being patted on the back by every Gryffindor who walked past his chair, not to mention the occasional outbursts of ‘Weasley is our King’ – but after a while he agreed that some fresh air might do him good.

  They spread their books out in the shade of the beech tree and sat down while Ron talked them through his first save of the match for what felt like the dozenth time.

  ‘Well, I mean, I’d already let in that one of Davies’s, so I wasn’t feeling all that confident, but I dunno, when Bradley came towards me, just out of nowhere, I thought – you can do this! And I had about a second to decide which way to fly, you know, because he looked like he was aiming for the right goalhoop – my right, obviously, his left – but I had a funny feeling that he was feinting, and so I took the chance and flew left – his right, I mean – and – well – you saw what happened,’ he concluded modestly, sweeping his hair back quite unnecessarily so that it looked interestingly windswept and glancing around to see whether the people nearest to them – a bunch of gossiping third-year Hufflepuffs – had heard him. ‘And then, when Chambers came at me about five minutes later – What?’ Ron asked, having stopped mid-sentence at the look on Harry’s face. ‘Why are you grinning?’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Harry quickly, and looked down at his Transfiguration notes, attempting to straighten his face. The truth was that Ron had just reminded Harry forcibly of another Gryffindor Quidditch player who had once sat rumpling his hair under this very tree. ‘I’m just glad we won, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ron slowly, savouring the words, ‘we won. Did you see the look on Chang’s face when Ginny got the Snitch right out from under her nose?’

  ‘I suppose she cried, did she?’ said Harry bitterly.

  ‘Well, yeah – more out of temper than anything, though …’ Ron frowned slightly. ‘But you saw her chuck her broom away when she got back to the ground, didn’t you?’

  ‘Er –’ said Harry.

  ‘Well, actually … no, Ron,’ said Hermione with a heavy sigh, putting down her book and looking at him apologetically. ‘As a matter of fact, the only bit of the match Harry and I saw was Davies’s first goal.’

  Ron’s carefully ruffled hair seemed to wilt with disappointment. ‘You didn’t watch?’ he said faintly, looking from one to the other. ‘You didn’t see me make any of those saves?’

  ‘Well – no,’ said Hermione, stretching out a placatory hand towards him. ‘But Ron, we didn’t want to leave – we had to!’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Ron, whose face was growing rather red. ‘How come?’

  ‘It was Hagrid,’ said Harry. ‘He decided to tell us why he’s been covered in injuries ever since he got back from the giants. He wanted us to go into the Forest with him, we had no choice, you know how he gets. Anyway …’

  The story was told in five minutes, by the end of which Ron’s indignation had been replaced by a look of total incredulity.

  ‘He brought one back and hid it in the Forest?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Harry grimly.

  ‘No,’ said Ron, as though by saying this he could make it untrue. ‘No, he can’t have.’

  ‘Well, he has,’ said Hermione firmly. ‘Grawp’s about sixteen feet tall, enjoys ripping up twenty-foot pine trees, and knows me,’ she snorted, ‘as Hermy.’

  Ron gave a nervous laugh.

  ‘And Hagrid wants us to …?’

  ‘Teach him English, yeah,’ said Harry.

  ‘He’s lost his mind,’ said Ron in an almost awed voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said H
ermione irritably, turning a page of Intermediate Transfiguration and glaring at a series of diagrams showing an owl turning into a pair of opera glasses. ‘Yes, I’m starting to think he has. But, unfortunately, he made Harry and me promise.’

  ‘Well, you’re just going to have to break your promise, that’s all,’ said Ron firmly. ‘I mean, come on … we’ve got exams and we’re about that far –’ he held up his hand to show thumb and forefinger almost touching ‘– from being chucked out as it is. And anyway … remember Norbert? Remember Aragog? Have we ever come off better for mixing with any of Hagrid’s monster mates?’

  ‘I know, it’s just that – we promised,’ said Hermione in a small voice.

  Ron smoothed his hair flat again, looking preoccupied.

  ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘Hagrid hasn’t been sacked yet, has he? He’s hung on this long, maybe he’ll hang on till the end of term and we won’t have to go near Grawp at all.’

  *

  The castle grounds were gleaming in the sunlight as though freshly painted; the cloudless sky smiled at itself in the smoothly sparkling lake; the satin green lawns rippled occasionally in a gentle breeze. June had arrived, but to the fifth-years this meant only one thing: their O.W.L.s were upon them at last.

  Their teachers were no longer setting them homework; lessons were devoted to revising those topics the teachers thought most likely to come up in the exams. The purposeful, feverish atmosphere drove nearly everything but the O.W.L.s from Harry’s mind, though he did wonder occasionally during Potions lessons whether Lupin had ever told Snape that he must continue giving Harry Occlumency tuition. If he had, then Snape had ignored Lupin as thoroughly as he was now ignoring Harry. This suited Harry very well; he was quite busy and tense enough without extra classes with Snape, and to his relief Hermione was much too preoccupied these days to badger him about Occlumency; she was spending a lot of time muttering to herself, and had not laid out any elf clothes for days.

  She was not the only person acting oddly as the O.W.L.s drew steadily nearer. Ernie Macmillan had developed an irritating habit of interrogating people about their revision practices.

  ‘How many hours d’you think you’re doing a day?’ he demanded of Harry and Ron as they queued outside Herbology, a manic gleam in his eyes.

  ‘I dunno,’ said Ron. ‘A few.’

  ‘More or less than eight?’

  ‘Less, I s’pose,’ said Ron, looking slightly alarmed.

  ‘I’m doing eight,’ said Ernie, puffing out his chest. ‘Eight or nine. I’m getting an hour in before breakfast every day. Eight’s my average. I can do ten on a good weekend day. I did nine and a half on Monday. Not so good on Tuesday – only seven and a quarter. Then on Wednesday –’

  Harry was deeply thankful that Professor Sprout ushered them into greenhouse three at that point, forcing Ernie to abandon his recital.

  Meanwhile, Draco Malfoy had found a different way to induce panic.

  ‘Of course, it’s not what you know,’ he was heard to tell Crabbe and Goyle loudly outside Potions a few days before the exams were to start, ‘it’s who you know. Now, Father’s been friendly with the head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority for years – old Griselda Marchbanks – we’ve had her round for dinner and everything …’

  ‘Do you think that’s true?’ Hermione whispered in alarm to Harry and Ron.

  ‘Nothing we can do about it if it is,’ said Ron gloomily.

  ‘I don’t think it’s true,’ said Neville quietly from behind them. ‘Because Griselda Marchbanks is a friend of my gran’s, and she’s never mentioned the Malfoys.’

  ‘What’s she like, Neville?’ asked Hermione at once. ‘Is she strict?’

  ‘Bit like Gran, really,’ said Neville in a subdued voice.

  ‘Knowing her won’t hurt your chances, though, will it?’ Ron told him encouragingly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it will make any difference,’ said Neville, still more miserably. ‘Gran’s always telling Professor Marchbanks I’m not as good as my dad … well … you saw what she’s like at St Mungo’s …’

  Neville looked fixedly at the floor. Harry, Ron and Hermione glanced at each other, but didn’t know what to say. It was the first time Neville had acknowledged that they had met at the wizarding hospital.

  Meanwhile, a flourishing black-market trade in aids to concentration, mental agility and wakefulness had sprung up among the fifth- and seventh-years. Harry and Ron were much tempted by the bottle of Baruffio’s Brain Elixir offered to them by Ravenclaw sixth-year Eddie Carmichael, who swore it was solely responsible for the nine ‘Outstanding’ O.W.L.s he had gained the previous summer and was offering a whole pint for a mere twelve Galleons. Ron assured Harry he would reimburse him for his half the moment he left Hogwarts and got a job, but before they could close the deal, Hermione had confiscated the bottle from Carmichael and poured the contents down a toilet.

  ‘Hermione, we wanted to buy that!’ shouted Ron.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she snarled. ‘You might as well take Harold Dingle’s powdered dragon claw and have done with it.’

  ‘Dingle’s got powdered dragon claw?’ said Ron eagerly.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Hermione. ‘I confiscated that, too. None of these things actually work, you know.’

  ‘Dragon claw does work!’ said Ron. ‘It’s supposed to be incredible, really gives your brain a boost, you come over all cunning for a few hours – Hermione, let me have a pinch, go on, it can’t hurt –’

  ‘This stuff can,’ said Hermione grimly. ‘I’ve had a look at it, and it’s actually dried Doxy droppings.’

  This information took the edge off Harry and Ron’s desire for brain stimulants.

  They received their examination timetables and details of the procedure for O.W.L.s during their next Transfiguration lesson.

  ‘As you can see,’ Professor McGonagall told the class as they copied down the dates and times of their exams from the blackboard, ‘your O.W.L.s are spread over two successive weeks. You will sit the theory papers in the mornings and the practice in the afternoons. Your practical Astronomy examination will, of course, take place at night.

  ‘Now, I must warn you that the most stringent anti-cheating charms have been applied to your examination papers. Auto-Answer Quills are banned from the examination hall, as are Remembralls, Detachable Cribbing Cuffs and Self-Correcting Ink. Every year, I am afraid to say, seems to harbour at least one student who thinks that he or she can get around the Wizarding Examinations Authority’s rules. I can only hope that it is nobody in Gryffindor. Our new – Headmistress –’ Professor McGonagall pronounced the word with the same look on her face that Aunt Petunia had whenever she was contemplating a particularly stubborn bit of dirt ‘– has asked the Heads of House to tell their students that cheating will be punished most severely – because, of course, your examination results will reflect upon the Headmistress’s new regime at the school –’

  Professor McGonagall gave a tiny sigh; Harry saw the nostrils of her sharp nose flare.

  ‘– however, that is no reason not to do your very best. You have your own futures to think about.’

  ‘Please, Professor,’ said Hermione, her hand in the air, ‘when will we find out our results?’

  ‘An owl will be sent to you some time in July,’ said Professor McGonagall.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Dean Thomas in an audible whisper, ‘so we don’t have to worry about it till the holidays.’

  Harry imagined sitting in his bedroom in Privet Drive in six weeks’ time, waiting for his O.W.L. results. Well, he thought, at least he would be sure of one bit of post that summer.

  Their first examination, Theory of Charms, was scheduled for Monday morning. Harry agreed to test Hermione after lunch on Sunday, but regretted it almost at once; she was very agitated and kept snatching the book back from him to check that she had got the answer completely right, finally hitting him hard on the nose with the sharp edge of Achievements in Charming.
/>   ‘Why don’t you just do it yourself?’ he said firmly, handing the book back to her, his eyes watering.

  Meanwhile, Ron was reading two years’ worth of Charms notes with his fingers in his ears, his lips moving soundlessly; Seamus Finnigan was lying flat on his back on the floor, reciting the definition of a Substantive Charm while Dean checked it against The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5; and Parvati and Lavender, who were practising basic Locomotion Charms, were making their pencil-cases race each other around the edge of the table.

  Dinner was a subdued affair that night. Harry and Ron did not talk much, but ate with gusto, having studied hard all day. Hermione, on the other hand, kept putting down her knife and fork and diving under the table for her bag, from which she would seize a book to check some fact or figure. Ron was just telling her that she ought to eat a decent meal or she would not sleep that night, when her fork slid from her limp fingers and landed with a loud tinkle on her plate.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said faintly, staring into the Entrance Hall. ‘Is that them? Is that the examiners?’

  Harry and Ron whipped around on their bench. Through the doors to the Great Hall they could see Umbridge standing with a small group of ancient-looking witches and wizards. Umbridge, Harry was pleased to see, looked rather nervous.

  ‘Shall we go and have a closer look?’ said Ron.

  Harry and Hermione nodded and they hastened towards the double doors into the Entrance Hall, slowing down as they stepped over the threshold to walk sedately past the examiners. Harry thought Professor Marchbanks must be the tiny, stooped witch with a face so lined it looked as though it had been draped in cobwebs; Umbridge was speaking to her deferentially. Professor Marchbanks seemed to be a little deaf; she was answering Professor Umbridge very loudly considering they were only a foot apart.