The Order of the Phoenix Read online

  ‘Journey was fine, journey was fine, we’ve made it plenty of times before!’ she said impatiently. ‘Now, I haven’t heard from Dumbledore lately!’ she added, peering around the Hall as though hopeful he might suddenly emerge from a broom cupboard. ‘No idea where he is, I suppose?’

  ‘None at all,’ said Umbridge, shooting a malevolent look at Harry, Ron and Hermione, who were now dawdling around the foot of the stairs as Ron pretended to do up his shoelace. ‘But I daresay the Ministry of Magic will track him down soon enough.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ shouted tiny Professor Marchbanks, ‘not if Dumbledore doesn’t want to be found! I should know … examined him personally in Transfiguration and Charms when he did N.E.W.T.s … did things with a wand I’d never seen before.’

  ‘Yes … well …’ said Professor Umbridge as Harry, Ron and Hermione dragged their feet up the marble staircase as slowly as they dared, ‘let me show you to the staff room. I daresay you’d like a cup of tea after your journey.’

  It was an uncomfortable sort of an evening. Everyone was trying to do some last-minute revising but nobody seemed to be getting very far. Harry went to bed early but then lay awake for what felt like hours. He remembered his careers consultation and McGonagall’s furious declaration that she would help him become an Auror if it was the last thing she did. He wished he had expressed a more achievable ambition now that exam time was here. He knew he was not the only one lying awake, but none of the others in the dormitory spoke and finally, one by one, they fell asleep.

  None of the fifth-years talked very much at breakfast next day, either: Parvati was practising incantations under her breath while the salt cellar in front of her twitched; Hermione was rereading Achievements in Charming so fast that her eyes appeared blurred; and Neville kept dropping his knife and fork and knocking over the marmalade.

  Once breakfast was over, the fifth- and seventh-years milled around in the Entrance Hall while the other students went off to lessons; then, at half past nine, they were called forwards class by class to re-enter the Great Hall, which had been rearranged exactly as Harry had seen it in the Pensieve when his father, Sirius and Snape had been taking their O.W.L.s; the four house tables had been removed and replaced instead with many tables for one, all facing the staff-table end of the Hall where Professor McGonagall stood facing them. When they were all seated and quiet, she said, ‘You may begin,’ and turned over an enormous hour-glass on the desk beside her, on which there were also spare quills, ink bottles and rolls of parchment.

  Harry turned over his paper, his heart thumping hard – three rows to his right and four seats ahead Hermione was already scribbling – and lowered his eyes to the first question: a) Give the incantation and b) describe the wand movement required to make objects fly.

  Harry had a fleeting memory of a club soaring high into the air and landing loudly on the thick skull of a troll … smiling slightly, he bent over the paper and began to write.

  *

  ‘Well, it wasn’t too bad, was it?’ asked Hermione anxiously in the Entrance Hall two hours later, still clutching the exam paper. ‘I’m not sure I did myself justice on Cheering Charms, I just ran out of time. Did you put in the counter-charm for hiccoughs? I wasn’t sure whether I ought to, it felt like too much – and on question twenty-three –’

  ‘Hermione,’ said Ron sternly, ‘we’ve been through this before … we’re not going through every exam afterwards, it’s bad enough doing them once.’

  The fifth-years ate lunch with the rest of the school (the four house tables had reappeared for the lunch hour), then they trooped off into the small chamber beside the Great Hall, where they were to wait until called for their practical examination. As small groups of students were called forwards in alphabetical order, those left behind muttered incantations and practised wand movements, occasionally poking each other in the back or eye by mistake.

  Hermione’s name was called. Trembling, she left the chamber with Anthony Goldstein, Gregory Goyle and Daphne Greengrass. Students who had already been tested did not return afterwards, so Harry and Ron had no idea how Hermione had done.

  ‘She’ll be fine, remember she got a hundred and twelve per cent on one of our Charms tests?’ said Ron.

  Ten minutes later, Professor Flitwick called, ‘Parkinson, Pansy – Patil, Padma – Patil, Parvati – Potter, Harry.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Ron quietly. Harry walked into the Great Hall, clutching his wand so tightly his hand shook.

  ‘Professor Tofty is free, Potter,’ squeaked Professor Flitwick, who was standing just inside the door. He pointed Harry towards what looked like the very oldest and baldest examiner who was sitting behind a small table in a far corner, a short distance from Professor Marchbanks, who was halfway through testing Draco Malfoy.

  ‘Potter, is it?’ said Professor Tofty, consulting his notes and peering over his pince-nez at Harry as he approached. ‘The famous Potter?’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Harry distinctly saw Malfoy throw a scathing look over at him; the wine-glass Malfoy had been levitating fell to the floor and smashed. Harry could not suppress a grin; Professor Tofty smiled back at him encouragingly.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said in his quavery old voice, ‘no need to be nervous. Now, if I could ask you to take this egg cup and make it do some cartwheels for me.’

  On the whole, Harry thought it went rather well. His Levitation Charm was certainly much better than Malfoy’s had been, though he wished he had not mixed up the incantations for Colour Change and Growth Charms, so that the rat he was supposed to be turning orange swelled shockingly and was the size of a badger before Harry could rectify his mistake. He was glad Hermione had not been in the Hall at the time and neglected to mention it to her afterwards. He could tell Ron, though; Ron had caused a dinner plate to mutate into a large mushroom and had no idea how it had happened.

  There was no time to relax that night; they went straight to the common room after dinner and submerged themselves in revision for Transfiguration next day; Harry went to bed with his head buzzing with complex spell models and theories.

  He forgot the definition of a Switching Spell during his written paper next morning but thought his practical could have been a lot worse. At least he managed to Vanish the whole of his iguana, whereas poor Hannah Abbott lost her head completely at the next table and somehow managed to multiply her ferret into a flock of flamingos, causing the examination to be halted for ten minutes while the birds were captured and carried out of the Hall.

  They had their Herbology exam on Wednesday (other than a small bite from a Fanged Geranium, Harry felt he had done reasonably well); and then, on Thursday, Defence Against the Dark Arts. Here, for the first time, Harry felt sure he had passed. He had no problem with any of the written questions and took particular pleasure, during the practical examination, in performing all the counter-jinxes and defensive spells right in front of Umbridge, who was watching coolly from near the doors into the Entrance Hall.

  ‘Oh, bravo!’ cried Professor Tofty, who was examining Harry again, when Harry demonstrated a perfect Boggart banishing spell. ‘Very good indeed! Well, I think that’s all, Potter … unless …’

  He leaned forwards a little.

  ‘I heard, from my dear friend Tiberius Ogden, that you can produce a Patronus? For a bonus point … ?’

  Harry raised his wand, looked directly at Umbridge and imagined her being sacked.

  ‘Expecto patronum!’

  His silver stag erupted from the end of his wand and cantered the length of the Hall. All of the examiners looked around to watch its progress and when it dissolved into silver mist Professor Tofty clapped his veined and knotted hands enthusiastically.

  ‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘Very well, Potter, you may go!’

  As Harry passed Umbridge beside the door, their eyes met. There was a nasty smile playing around her wide, slack mouth, but he did not care. Unless he was very much mistaken (and he was not planning on telling anyb
ody, in case he was), he had just achieved an ‘Outstanding’ O.W.L.

  On Friday, Harry and Ron had a day off while Hermione sat her Ancient Runes exam, and as they had the whole weekend in front of them they permitted themselves a break from revision. They stretched and yawned beside the open window, through which warm summer air was wafting as they played wizard chess. Harry could see Hagrid in the distance, teaching a class on the edge of the Forest. He was trying to guess what creatures they were examining – he thought it must be unicorns, because the boys seemed to be standing back a little – when the portrait hole opened and Hermione clambered in, looking thoroughly bad-tempered.

  ‘How were the Runes?’ said Ron, yawning and stretching.

  ‘I mis-translated ehwaz,’ said Hermione furiously. ‘It means partnership, not defence; I mixed it up with eihwaz.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Ron lazily, ‘that’s only one mistake, isn’t it, you’ll still get –’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ said Hermione angrily. ‘It could be the one mistake that makes the difference between a pass and a fail. And what’s more, someone’s put another Niffler in Umbridge’s office. I don’t know how they got it through that new door, but I just walked past there and Umbridge is shrieking her head off – by the sound of it, it tried to take a chunk out of her leg –’

  ‘Good,’ said Harry and Ron together.

  ‘It is not good!’ said Hermione hotly. ‘She thinks it’s Hagrid doing it, remember? And we do not want Hagrid chucked out!’

  ‘He’s teaching at the moment; she can’t blame him,’ said Harry, gesturing out of the window.

  ‘Oh, you’re so naïve sometimes, Harry. You really think Umbridge will wait for proof?’ said Hermione, who seemed determined to be in a towering temper, and she swept off towards the girls’ dormitories, banging the door behind her.

  ‘Such a lovely, sweet-tempered girl,’ said Ron, very quietly, prodding his queen forward to beat up one of Harry’s knights.

  Hermione’s bad mood persisted for most of the weekend, though Harry and Ron found it quite easy to ignore as they spent most of Saturday and Sunday revising for Potions on Monday, the exam which Harry had been looking forward to least – and which he was sure would be the downfall of his ambitions to become an Auror. Sure enough, he found the written paper difficult, though he thought he might have got full marks on the question about Polyjuice Potion; he could describe its effects accurately, having taken it illegally in his second year.

  The afternoon practical was not as dreadful as he had expected it to be. With Snape absent from the proceedings, he found that he was much more relaxed than he usually was while making potions. Neville, who was sitting very near Harry, also looked happier than Harry had ever seen him during a Potions class. When Professor Marchbanks said, ‘Step away from your cauldrons, please, the examination is over,’ Harry corked his sample flask feeling that he might not have achieved a good grade but he had, with luck, avoided a fail.

  ‘Only four exams left,’ said Parvati Patil wearily as they headed back to Gryffindor common room.

  ‘Only!’ said Hermione snappishly. ‘I’ve got Arithmancy and it’s probably the toughest subject there is!’

  Nobody was foolish enough to snap back, so she was unable to vent her spleen on any of them and was reduced to telling off some first-years for giggling too loudly in the common room.

  Harry was determined to perform well in Tuesday’s Care of Magical Creatures exam so as not to let Hagrid down. The practical examination took place in the afternoon on the lawn on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where students were required to correctly identify the Knarl hidden among a dozen hedgehogs (the trick was to offer them all milk in turn: Knarls, highly suspicious creatures whose quills had many magical properties, generally went berserk at what they saw as an attempt to poison them); then demonstrate correct handling of a Bowtruckle; feed and clean out a Fire Crab without sustaining serious burns; and choose, from a wide selection of food, the diet they would give a sick unicorn.

  Harry could see Hagrid watching anxiously out of his cabin window. When Harry’s examiner, a plump little witch this time, smiled at him and told him he could leave, Harry gave Hagrid a fleeting thumbs-up before heading back to the castle.

  The Astronomy theory paper on Wednesday morning went well enough. Harry was not convinced he had got the names of all Jupiter’s moons right, but was at least confident that none of them was inhabited by mice. They had to wait until evening for their practical Astronomy; the afternoon was devoted instead to Divination.

  Even by Harry’s low standards in Divination, the exam went very badly. He might as well have tried to see moving pictures on the desktop as in the stubbornly blank crystal ball; he lost his head completely during tea-leaf reading, saying it looked to him as though Professor Marchbanks would shortly be meeting a round, dark, soggy stranger, and rounded off the whole fiasco by mixing up the life and head lines on her palm and informing her that she ought to have died the previous Tuesday.

  ‘Well, we were always going to fail that one,’ said Ron gloomily as they ascended the marble staircase. He had just made Harry feel rather better by telling him how he had told the examiner in detail about the ugly man with a wart on his nose in his crystal ball, only to look up and realise he had been describing his examiner’s reflection.

  ‘We shouldn’t have taken the stupid subject in the first place,’ said Harry.

  ‘Still, at least we can give it up now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘No more pretending we care what happens when Jupiter and Uranus get too friendly.’

  ‘And from now on, I don’t care if my tea-leaves spell die, Ron, die – I’m just chucking them in the bin where they belong.’

  Harry laughed just as Hermione came running up behind them. He stopped laughing at once, in case it annoyed her.

  ‘Well, I think I’ve done all right in Arithmancy,’ she said, and Harry and Ron both sighed with relief. ‘Just time for a quick look over our star-charts before dinner, then …’

  When they reached the top of the Astronomy Tower at eleven o’clock, they found a perfect night for stargazing, cloudless and still. The grounds were bathed in silvery moonlight and there was a slight chill in the air. Each of them set up his or her telescope and, when Professor Marchbanks gave the word, proceeded to fill in the blank star-chart they had been given.

  Professors Marchbanks and Tofty strolled among them, watching as they entered the precise positions of the stars and planets they were observing. All was quiet except for the rustle of parchment, the occasional creak of a telescope as it was adjusted on its stand, and the scribbling of many quills. Half an hour passed, then an hour; the little squares of reflected gold light flickering on the ground below started to vanish as lights in the castle windows were extinguished.

  As Harry completed the constellation Orion on his chart, however, the front doors of the castle opened directly below the parapet where he was standing, so that light spilled down the stone steps a little way across the lawn. Harry glanced down as he made a slight adjustment to the position of his telescope and saw five or six elongated shadows moving over the brightly lit grass before the doors swung shut and the lawn became a sea of darkness once more.

  Harry put his eye back to his telescope and refocused it, now examining Venus. He looked down at his chart to enter the planet there, but something distracted him; pausing with his quill suspended over the parchment, he squinted down into the shadowy grounds and saw half a dozen figures walking over the lawn. If they had not been moving, and the moonlight had not been gilding the tops of their heads, they would have been indistinguishable from the dark ground on which they walked. Even at this distance, Harry had a funny feeling he recognised the walk of the squattest of them, who seemed to be leading the group.

  He could not think why Umbridge would be taking a stroll outside after midnight, much less accompanied by five others. Then somebody coughed behind him, and he remembered that he was halfway thro
ugh an exam. He had quite forgotten Venus’s position. Jamming his eye to his telescope, he found it again and was once more about to enter it on his chart when, alert for any odd sound, he heard a distant knock which echoed through the deserted grounds, followed immediately by the muffled barking of a large dog.

  He looked up, his heart hammering. There were lights on in Hagrid’s windows and the people he had observed crossing the lawn were now silhouetted against them. The door opened and he distinctly saw six sharply defined figures walk over the threshold. The door closed again and there was silence.

  Harry felt very uneasy. He glanced around to see whether Ron or Hermione had noticed what he had, but Professor Marchbanks came walking behind him at that moment and, not wanting to look as though he was sneaking looks at anyone else’s work, Harry hastily bent over his star-chart and pretended to be adding notes to it while really peering over the top of the parapet towards Hagrid’s cabin. Figures were now moving across the cabin windows, temporarily blocking the light.

  He could feel Professor Marchbanks’s eyes on the back of his neck and pressed his eye again to his telescope, staring up at the moon though he had marked its position an hour ago, but as Professor Marchbanks moved on he heard a roar from the distant cabin that echoed through the darkness right to the top of the Astronomy Tower. Several of the people around Harry ducked out from behind their telescopes and peered instead in the direction of Hagrid’s cabin.

  Professor Tofty gave another dry little cough.

  ‘Try and concentrate, now, boys and girls,’ he said softly.

  Most people returned to their telescopes. Harry looked to his left. Hermione was gazing transfixed at Hagrid’s cabin.

  ‘Ahem – twenty minutes to go,’ said Professor Tofty.

  Hermione jumped and returned at once to her star-chart; Harry looked down at his own and noticed that he had mis-labelled Venus as Mars. He bent to correct it.