Luna said vaguely that she did not know how soon Rita's interview with Y/n and Harry would appear in The Quibbler, that her father was expecting a lovely long article on recent sightings of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. 'And of course, that'll be a very important story, so Y/n and Harry's might have to wait for the following issue.' said Luna.
It had not been a pleasant experience for Y/n to have to remember everything about the night when Voldemort had returned. He could tell Harry had not enjoyed it either as Rita had pressed them for every little detail and they had given her everything they could, knowing that this was their one big opportunity to tell the world the truth. Y/n was careful to omit the fact he was an animagus and simply said the Death eaters were too distracted to deal with him. He made up for this by reluctantly showing Rita Skeeter the scars that had been left upon his back and eye.
Harry wondered how people would react to the story. He guessed that it would confirm to a lot of people in the view that he was completely insane, not least because the story would be appearing alongside utter rubbish about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. But the breakout of Bellatrix Lestrange and her fellow Death Eaters had given Harry a burning desire to do something, whether or not it worked...
"Can't wait to see what Umbridge thinks of you two going public." said Dean to Y/n and Harry, sounding awestruck at dinner on Monday night. Seamus was shoveling down large amounts of chicken and ham pie on Dean's other side, but Y/n knew he was listening.
"It's the right thing to do, Y/n, Harry." said Neville, who was sitting opposite them. He was rather pale, but went on in a low voice. "It must have been...tough...talking about it...was it?"
"It was not pleasant Neville. But sometimes doing the right thing is not pleasant." Y/n said.
"Yeah." mumbled Harry. "But people have got to know what Voldemort's capable of, haven't they?"
"That's right." said Neville, nodding. "And his Death Eaters, too...people should know..."
Neville left his sentence hanging and returned to his baked potato. Seamus looked up, but when he caught Y/n's silver eye he looked quickly back at his plate again. After a while, Dean, Seamus and Neville departed for the common room, leaving Harry, Y/n and Hermione at the table waiting for Ron, who had not yet had dinner because of Quidditch practice.
Cho Chang walked into the Hall with her friend Marietta. Harry's stomach gave an unpleasant lurch, but she did not look over at the Gryffindor table, and sat down with her back to him.
"Oh, I forgot to ask you." said Hermione brightly, glancing over at the Ravenclaw table. "What happened on your date with Cho? How come you were back so early?"
"Er...well, it was..." said Harry, pulling a dish of rhubarb crumble towards him and helping himself to seconds. "A complete fiasco, now you mention it."
"A fiasco?" Y/n said as he and Hermione looked at each other. "What happened?"
And so Harry told them what had happened in Madam Puddifoot's teashop.
"...so then." he finished several minutes later, as the final bit of crumble disappeared. "She jumps up, right, and says, 'I'll see you around, Harry.' and runs out of the place!" He put down his spoon and looked at Y/n and Hermione. "I mean, what was all that about? What was going on?"
Hermione glanced over at the back of Cho's head and sighed. "Oh, Harry." she said sadly. "Well, I'm sorry but you were a bit tactless."
"Me, tactless?" said Harry, outraged. "One minute we were getting on fine, next minute she was telling me that Roger Davies asked her out and how she used to go and snog Cedric in that stupid teashop...how was I supposed to feel about that?"
"I understand your frustrations, It was not a topic that Miss Chang should have brought up on a date but Harry..." Y/n trailed off.
"Well, you see." Hermione began to follow up with the patient air of someone explaining that one plus one equals two to an over-emotional toddler. "You shouldn't have told her that you wanted to meet me halfway through your date."
"But, but..." spluttered Harry. "But...you told me to meet you at twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without telling her?"
"You should have told her differently." said Hermione, still with that maddeningly patient air. "You should have said it was really annoying, but I'd made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly. And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am, too." Hermione added as an afterthought.
"But I don't think you're ugly." said Harry, bemused before he quickly turned to Y/n. "You know I don't mean that in a..."
"I am aware Harry." Y/n said shaking his head.
Hermione laughed. "Harry, you're worse than Ron..." as Ron himself came stumping into the Hall splattered with mud and looking grumpy. "Look...you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous. It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her."
"Is that what she was doing?" said Harry, as Ron dropped onto the bench next to him and pulled every dish within reach towards him. "Well, wouldn't it have been easier if she'd just asked me whether I liked her better than you?"
"Girls don't often ask questions like that." said Hermione.
"Well, they should!" said Harry forcefully. "Then I could've just told her I fancy her, and she wouldn't have had to get herself all worked up again about Cedric dying!"
Y/n wanted to comment but given that he was sitting next to his girlfriend he thought it best to keep quiet in this moment.
"I'm not saying what she did was sensible." said Hermione, as Ginny joined them, just as muddy as Ron and looking equally disgruntled. "I'm just trying to make you see how she was feeling at the time."
"You should write a book." Ron told Hermione as he cut up his potatoes. "Translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them."
"Yeah." said Harry fervently, looking over at the Ravenclaw table. Cho had just got up, and, still not looking at him, she left the Great Hall. Feeling rather depressed, he looked back at Ron and Ginny. "So, how was Quidditch practice?"
"It was a nightmare." said Ron in a surly voice.
"Oh come now." Y/n began. "I am sure it was not that..."
"Yes, it was." said Ginny. "It was appalling. Angelina was nearly in tears by the end of it."
Ron and Ginny went off for baths after dinner, While Harry, Y/n and Hermione returned to the busy Gryffindor common room and their usual piles of homework. Harry had been struggling with a new star-chart for Astronomy for half an hour when Fred and George turned up.
"Ron and Ginny not here?" asked Fred, looking around as he pulled up a chair, and when Y/n said no Fred spoke again. "Good. We were watching their practice. They're going to be slaughtered. They're complete rubbish without us."
"Come on, Ginny's not bad." said George fairly, sitting down next to Fred. "Actually, I dunno how she got so good, seeing how we never let her play with us."
"She's been breaking into your broom shed in the garden since the age of six and taking each of your brooms out in turn when you weren't looking." said Hermione from behind her tottering pile of Ancient Rune books.
"Oh." said George, looking mildly impressed. "Well...that'd explain it."
"It was I who suggested Ginny to Angelina if you must know." Y/n told the twins now. "I thought she would make a good chaser for next year with Angelina's departure. Though given all our bans..." The twins and Harry grumbled at these words. "She has had to step up earlier than expected. How is Ron getting on by the way?"
"Well, he can do it if he doesn't think anyone's watching him." said Fred, rolling his eyes. "So all we have to do is ask the crowd to turn their backs and talk among themselves every time the Quaffle goes up his end on Saturday."
He got up again and moved restlessly to the window, staring out across the dark grounds. "You know, Quidditch was about the only thing in this place worth staying for."
Hermione cast him a stern look. "You've got exams coming!"
"Told you already, we're not fussed about NEWTs." said Fred. "The Snackboxes are ready to roll, we found out how to get rid of those boils, just a couple of drops of Murtlap essence sorts them, Lee put us on to it."
George yawned widely and looked out disconsolately at the cloudy night sky. "I dunno if I even want to watch this match. If Zacharias Smith beats us I might have to kill myself."
"Kill him, more like." said Fred firmly.
"That's the trouble with Quidditch." said Hermione absent-mindedly, once again bent over her Runes translation. "It creates all this bad feeling and tension between the houses."
She looked up to find her copy of Spellman's Syllabary, and caught Fred, George, Harry and even Y/n all staring at her with expressions of mingled disgust and incredulity on their faces.
"Well, it does!" she said impatiently. "It's only a game, isn't it?"
"It is more than a game Hermione." Y/n said disappointed.
Harry was shaking his head. "Hermione, you're good on feelings and stuff, but you just don't understand about Quidditch."
"Maybe not." she said darkly, returning to her translation. "But at least my happiness doesn't depend on Ron's goalkeeping ability."
And though Harry would rather have jumped off the Astronomy Tower than admit it to her, by the time they had watched the game the following Saturday he would have given any number of Galleons not to care about Quidditch either.
The very best thing you could say about the match was that it was short, the Gryffindor spectators had to endure only twenty-two minutes of agony. It was hard to say what the worst thing was, Y/n thought it was a close-run contest between Ron's fourteenth failed save, Sloper missing the Bludger but hitting Angelina in the mouth with his bat, and Kirke shrieking and falling backwards off his broom when Zacharias Smith zoomed at him carrying the Quaffle. The miracle was that Gryffindor only lost by ten points. Ginny had managed to snatch the Snitch from right under Hufflepuff Seeker Summerby's nose, so that the final score was two hundred and forty versus two hundred and thirty.
"Good catch." Harry told Ginny back in the common room, where the atmosphere resembled that of a particularly dismal funeral.
"I was lucky." she shrugged. "It wasn't a very fast Snitch and Summerby's got a cold, he sneezed and closed his eyes at exactly the wrong moment. Anyway, once you're back on the team..."
"Ginny, We've got a lifelong ban." Harry said.
"You're banned as long as Umbridge is in the school." Ginny corrected him. "There's a difference. Anyway, once you're back, I think I'll, try out for Chaser. Angelina and Alicia are both leaving next year and I prefer goal-scoring to Seeking anyway."
Y/n looked over at Ron, who was hunched in a corner, staring at his knees, a bottle of Butlerbeer clutched in his hand.
"Angelina still won't let him resign." Ginny said, as though reading Y/n's mind. "She says she knows he's got it in him."
Harry liked Angelina for the faith she was showing in Ron, but at the same time thought it would really be kinder to let him leave the team. Ron had left the pitch to another booming chorus of 'Weasley is our King' sung with great gusto by the Slytherins, who were now favourites to win the Quidditch Cup.
Fred and George wandered over.
"I haven't even got the heart to take the mickey out of him." said Fred, looking over at Ron's crumpled figure. "Mind you...when he missed the fourteenth..." He made wild motions with his arms as though doing an upright doggy-paddle. "Well, I'll save it for parties, eh?"
Ron dragged himself up to bed shortly after this. Out of respect for his feelings, Harry and Y/n waited a while before going up to the dormitory themselves, so that Ron could pretend to be asleep if he wanted to. Sure enough, when they finally entered the room Ron was snoring a little too loudly to be entirely plausible.
They entered the Great Hall for breakfast at exactly the same moment as the post owls on Monday morning. Hermione was not the only person eagerly awaiting her Daily Prophet, nearly everyone was eager for more news about the escaped Death Eaters, who, despite many reported sightings, had still not been caught. She gave the delivery owl a Knut and unfolded the newspaper eagerly while Y/n helped himself to some toast. Just as he was about to start eating an owl landed with a thud in front of him and Harry.
'Who're you after?' Harry asked it, languidly removing his orange juice from underneath its beak and leaning forwards to see the recipient's name and address.
Harry Potter
Great Hall
Hogwarts School
Frowning, he made to take the letter from the owl, but before he could do so, three, four, five more owls had fluttered down beside it and were jockeying for position, treading in the butter and knocking over the salt as each one attempted to give him and now Y/n their letters first.
"What's going on?" Ron asked in amazement, as the whole of Gryffindor table leaned forwards to watch and another seven owls landed amongst the first ones, screeching, hooting and flapping their wings.
"Y/n! Harry!' said Hermione breathlessly, plunging her hands into the feathery mass and pulling out a screech owl bearing a long, cylindrical package. "I think I know what this means...open this one first!"
Y/n ripped off the brown packaging. Out rolled a tightly furled copy of the March edition of The Quibbler. He unrolled it to see his and Harry's own faces looking at him from the front cover. In large red letters across this picture were the words.
HARRY POTTER AND Y/N GRINDELWALD SPEAK OUT AT LAST:
THE TRUTH ABOUT HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED
AND THE NIGHT WE SAW HIM RETURN
"It's good, isn't it?" said Luna, who had drifted over to the Gryffindor table and now squeezed herself onto the bench between Fred and Ron. "It came out yesterday, I asked Dad to send a free copy. I expect all these." she waved a hand at the assembled owls still scrabbling around on the table in front of Harry and Y/n. "Are letters from readers."
"That's what I thought." said Hermione eagerly. "Y/n, Harry, do you mind if we..."
Y/n just waved his hand indicating it was fine with him.
"Help yourself." said Harry, feeling slightly bemused.
Ron and Hermione both started ripping open envelopes.
"This one's from a bloke who thinks you're off your rocker Y/n." said Ron, glancing down at his letter. "Ah well..."
"This woman recommends you both try a good course of Shock Spells at St. Mungo's." said Hermione, looking disappointed and crumpling up a second.
"This one looks ok, though." said Harry slowly scanning a long letter from a witch in Paisley. "Hey she says she believes us!"
"This one's in two minds." said Fred, who had joined in the letter-opening with enthusiasm. "Says you both don't come across as mad people, but he really doesn't want to believe You-Know-Who's back so he doesn't know what to think now. Blimey, what a waste of parchment."
"Most would rather lie to themselves than admit the truth." Y/n said.
"Here's another one you two have convinced!" said Hermione excitedly. "Having read your side of the story, I am forced to the conclusion that the Daily Prophet has treated you two very unfairly...little though I want to think that He Who Must Not Be Named has returned, I am forced to accept that you are telling the truth...Oh, this is wonderful!"
"Another one who thinks you're barking." said Ron, throwing a crumpled letter over his shoulder "...but this one says you've got her converted and she now thinks you're real heroes...she's put in a photograph, too...wow!"
"What is going on here?" said a falsely sweet, girlish voice.
Y/n and Harry looked up with hands full of envelopes. Professor Umbridge was standing behind Fred and Luna, her bulging toad's eyes scanning the mess of owls and letters on the table in front of the two. Behind her he saw many of the students watching them avidly.
"Breakfast." Y/n said simply.
"Why have you got all these letters, Mr. Potter, Mr Grindelwald?" Umbridge asked slowly.
"Is that a crime now?" said Fred loudly. "Getting mail?"
"Be careful, Mr Weasley or I shall have to put you in detention." said Umbridge. "Well, Mr Potter, Mr Grindelwald?"
"People have written to us because of an interview we recently gave." said Y/n.
"One about what happened to us last June." Harry said now. For some reason he glanced up at the staff table as he said this. Harry had the strangest feeling that Dumbledore had been watching him and Y/n a second before, but when he looked towards the Headmaster he seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Professor Flitwick.
"An interview?" repeated Umbridge, her voice thinner and higher than ever. "What do you mean?"
"I mean a reporter asked us questions and we answered them." said Harry. "Here..." And he threw the copy of The Quibbler to her. She caught it and stared down at the cover. Her pale, doughy face turned an ugly, patchy violet. Something that deeply satisfied Y/n.
"When did you do this?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
"Last weekend." said Harry.
"In Hogsmeade." Y/n added.
She looked up at them, incandescent with rage, the magazine shaking in her stubby fingers. "There will be no more Hogsmeade trips for you, Mr. Potter, Mr Grindelwald." she whispered. "How you dare...how you could..." She took a deep breath. "I have tried again and again to teach you not to tell lies. The message, apparently, has still not sunk in. Fifty points from Gryffindor and another week's worth of detentions."
She stalked away, clutching The Quibbler to her chest, the eyes of many students following her.
The others could just hear Y/n chuckling now and they turned to him. "A small price to pay."
By mid-morning enormous signs had been put up all over the school, not just on house noticeboards, but in the corridors and classrooms too.
'BY ORDER OF THE HIGH INQUISITOR OF HOGWARTS
Any student found in possession of the magazine
The Quibbler will be expelled.
The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven.
Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge, High Inquisitor'
For some reason, every time Hermione caught sight of one of these signs she beamed with pleasure.
"What exactly are you so happy about?" Harry asked her.
"Oh, Harry, don't you see?" Hermione breathed. "If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read that interview, it was banning it!"
"Which is why I said it was a small price to pay, She has played right into our hands." Y/n smiled.
And it seemed that Hermione was quite right. By the end of the day, though Y/n and Harry had not seen so much as a corner of The Quibbler anywhere in the school, the whole place seemed to be quoting the interview to each other. They heard them whispering about it as they queued up outside classes, discussing it over lunch and in the back of lessons, while Hermione even reported that every occupant of the cubicles in the girls' toilets had been talking about it when she nipped in there before Ancient Runes.
"Then they spotted me, and obviously they know I know you two, so they bombarded me with questions." Hermione told them her eyes shining. "I think they believe you both, I really do. I think you've finally got them convinced!"
"I should hope they know you know me, we have been dating for eight months after all." Y/n lightly joked.
"You know what I meant Y/n." Hermione said brashly causing him to chuckle.
"I do. I do." He said. "Still, It is nice to hear that people might be starting to believe us."
Meanwhile, Professor Umbridge was stalking the school, stopping students at random and demanding that they turn out their books and pockets, Y/n knew she was looking for copies of The Quibbler, but the students were several steps ahead of her. The pages carrying His and Harry's interview had been bewitched to resemble extracts from textbooks if anyone but themselves read it, or else wiped magically blank until they wanted to peruse it again. Soon it seemed that every single person in the school had read it.
The teachers were of course forbidden from mentioning the interview by Educational Decree Number Twenty-six, but they found ways to express their feelings about it all the same. Professor Sprout awarded Gryffindor twenty points when Harry passed her a watering can, a beaming Professor Flitwick pressed a box of squeaking sugar mice on Y/n at the end of Charms, said. "Shh!" and hurried away, and Professor Trelawney broke into hysterical sobs during Divination and announced to the startled class, and a very disapproving Umbridge, that Harry was not going to suffer an early death after all, but would live to a ripe old age, become Minister for Magic and have twelve children.
But what made Harry happiest was Cho catching up with him as he, Ron, Y/n and Hermione were hurrying along to Transfiguration the next day. Before he knew what had happened, her hand was in his and she was breathing in his ear, "I'm really, really sorry. That interview was so brave...it made me cry."
Y/n just looked at Hermione as one of the corners of his mouth went up in uncertainty about Cho's behavior.
Harry however was sorry to hear she had shed even more tears over it, but very glad they were on speaking terms again, and even more pleased when she gave him a swift kiss on the cheek and hurried off again. And unbelievably, no sooner had they arrived outside Transfiguration than something just as good happened, Seamus stepped out of the queue to face him and Y/n.
"I just wanted to say." he mumbled, squinting at their knees. "I believe you. And I've sent a copy of that magazine to me mam."
If anything more was needed to complete the happiness, it was the reaction they got from Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle. Y/n and Harry saw them sitting with Atticus, their heads together later that afternoon in the library, they were with a weedy-looking boy Hermione whispered was called Theodore Nott. They looked round at Y/n and Harry as Y/n browsed the shelves for a book he wanted. Y/n heard Goyle crack his knuckles threateningly and Malfoy whispered something undoubtedly malevolent to Crabbe.
Y/n knew perfectly well why they were acting like this, he and Harry had named all of their fathers as Death Eaters. Deciding to stir the pot he turned his head towards them and they looked up to see him give them all a wink.
"And the best bit." whispered Hermione gleefully, as they left the library. "Is they can't contradict you, because they can't admit they've read the article!"
To cap it all, Luna told Y/n over dinner that no issue of The Quibbler had ever sold out faster. "Dad's reprinting!" she told him, her eyes popping excitedly. "He can't believe it, he says people seem even more interested in this than the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks!"
"I wonder why..." Y/n heard Hermione whisper to him as she seemed to have copied the way he would comment on such things.
Y/n and Harry were heroes in the Gryffindor common room that night. Daringly, Fred and George had put an Enlargement Charm on the front cover of The Quibbler and hung it on the wall, so that Y/n and Harry's giant heads gazed down upon the proceedings, occasionally saying things like 'THE MINISTRY ARE MORONS' and 'EAT DUNG, UMBRIDGE' in a booming voice. Hermione did not find this very amusing saying it interfered with her concentration, and she ended up going to bed early out of irritation. Y/n and Harry had to admit that the poster was not quite as funny after an hour or two, especially when the talking spell had started to wear off, so that it merely shouted disconnected words like 'DUNG' and 'UMBRIDGE' at more and more frequent intervals in a progressively higher voice.
In fact, it started to make Harry's head ache and his scar began prickling uncomfortably again. To disappointed moans from the many people who were sitting around him, asking him to relive his interview for the umpteenth time, he announced that he too needed an early night.
"You go up Harry, I am sure I can spare a few minutes to give you a rest." Y/n said which Harry appreciated.
The dormitory was empty when Harry reached it. He rested his forehead for a moment against the cool glass of the window beside his bed, it felt soothing against his scar. Then he undressed and got into bed, wishing his headache would go away. He also felt slightly sick. He rolled over onto his side, closed his eyes, and fell asleep almost at once.
He was standing in a dark, curtained room lit by a single branch of candles. His hands were clenched on the back of a chair in front of him. They were long-fingered and white as though they had not seen sunlight for years and looked like large, pale spiders against the dark velvet of the chair.
Beyond the chair, in a pool of light cast upon the floor by the candles, knelt a man in black robes.
"I have been badly advised, it seems." said Harry, in a high, cold voice that pulsed with anger.
"Master, I crave your pardon." croaked the man kneeling on the floor. The back of his head glimmered in the candlelight. He seemed to be trembling.
"I do not blame you, Rookwood." said Harry in that cold, cruel voice.
He relinquished his grip on the chair and walked around it, closer to the man cowering on the floor, until he stood directly over him in the darkness, looking down from a far greater height than usual.
"You are sure of your facts, Rookwood?" asked Harry.
"Yes, My Lord, yes...I used to work in the Department after...after all..."
"Avery told me Bode would be able to remove it."
"Bode could never have taken it, Master...Bode would have known he could not...undoubtedly, that is why he fought so hard against Malfoy's Imperius Curse..."
"Stand up, Rookwood." whispered Harry.
The kneeling man almost fell over in his haste to obey. His face was pockmarked, the scars were thrown into relief by the candlelight. He remained a little stooped when standing, as though halfway through a bow, and he darted terrified looks up at Harry's face.
"You have done well to tell me this." said Harry. "Very well...I have wasted months on fruitless schemes, it seems...but no matter...we begin again, from now. You have Lord Voldemort's gratitude, Rookwood..."
"My Lord...yes, My Lord." gasped Rookwood, his voice hoarse with relief.
"I shall need your help. I shall need all the information you can give me."
"Of course, My Lord, of course...anything..."
"Very well...you may go. Send Avery to me."
Rookwood scurried backwards, bowing, and disappeared through a door.
Left alone in the dark room, Harry turned towards the wall. A cracked, age-spotted mirror hung on the wall in the shadows. Harry moved towards it. His reflection grew larger and clearer in the darkness, a face whiter than a skull...red eyes with slits for pupils...
"NOOOOOOOOO!'"
"What?" yelled a voice nearby.
Harry thrashed around madly, became entangled in the hangings and fell out of his bed. For a few seconds he did not know where he was, he was convinced he was about to see the white, skull-like lace looming at him out of the dark again, then very near to him Ron's voice spoke. "Will you stop acting like a maniac so I can get you out of here!"
Ron wrenched the hangings apart and Harry stared up at him in the moonlight, flat on his back, his scar searing with pain. Ron looked as though he had just been getting ready for bed, one arm was out of his robes.
"Has someone been attacked again?" asked Ron, pulling Harry roughly to his feet. "Is it Dad? Is it that snake?"
"No...everyone's fine..." gasped Harry, whose forehead felt as though it were on fire. "Well... Avery isn't, he's in trouble. He gave him the wrong information. Voldemort's really angry..."
Harry groaned and sank, shaking, on to his bed, rubbing his scar.
"But Rookwood's going to help him now...he's on the right track again..."
"What are you talking about?" said Ron, sounding scared. "D'you mean...did you just see You-Know-Who?"
"I was You-Know-Who." said Harry, and he stretched out his hands in the darkness and held them up to his face, to check that they were no longer deathly white and long-fingered. "He was with Rookwood, he's one of the Death Eaters who escaped from Azkaban, remember? Rookwood's just told him Bode couldn't have done it."
"Done what?"
"Remove something...he said Bode would have known he couldn't have done it. Bode was under the Imperius Curse... I think he said Malfoy's dad put it on him."
"Bode was bewitched to remove something?" Ron said. "But...Harry, that's got to be..."
"The weapon." Harry finished the sentence for him. "I know."
The dormitory door opened, Dean and Seamus came in. Harry swung his legs back into bed. He did not want to look as though anything odd had just happened, seeing as Seamus had only just stopped thinking Harry was a nutter.
"Did you say." murmured Ron, putting his head close to Harry's on the pretence of helping himself to water from the jug on his bedside table. "That you were You-Know-Who?"
"Yeah." said Harry quietly.
Ron took an unnecessarily large gulp of water, Harry saw it spill over his chin onto his chest.
"Harry." he said, as Dean and Seamus clattered around noisily, pulling off their robes and talking, "You've got to tell..."
"I haven't got to tell anyone." said Harry shortly. "I wouldn't have seen it at all if I could do Occlumency. I'm supposed to have learned to shut this stuff out. That's what they want."
By 'they' he meant Dumbledore. He got back into bed and rolled over on to his side with his back to Ron and after a while he heard Ron's mattress creak as he, too, lay back down. Harry's scar began to burn, he bit hard on his pillow to stop himself making a noise. Somewhere, he knew, Avery was being punished.
Harry and Ron waited until break next morning to tell Y/n and Hermione exactly what had happened, they wanted to be absolutely sure they could not be overheard. Standing in their usual corner of the cool and breezy courtyard, Harry told them every detail of the dream he could remember. When he had finished, Neither said a thing at all for a few moments. Y/n held a hand to his chin deep in thought while Hermione stared with a kind of painful intensity at Fred and George, who were both headless and selling their magical hats from under their cloaks on the other side of the yard.
"So that's why they killed him." she said quietly, withdrawing her gaze from Fred and George at last. "When Bode tried to steal this weapon, something funny happened to him."
"There must be defensive spells on it, or around it, to stop people touching it." Y/n said in agreement.
"That's why he was in St. Mungos, his brain had gone all funny and he couldn't talk. Hermione continued. "But remember what the Healer told us? He was recovering. And they couldn't risk him getting better, could they? I mean, the shock of whatever happened when he touched that weapon probably made the Imperius Curse lift. Once he'd got his voice back, he'd explain what he'd been doing, wouldn't he? They would have known he'd been sent to steal the weapon. Of course, it would have been easy for Lucius Malfoy to put the curse on him. Never out of the Ministry, is he?"
"He was even hanging around that day I had my hearing." said Harry. "In the...hang on..." he said slowly. "He was in the Department of Mysteries corridor that day! Your dad said he was probably trying to sneak down and find out what happened in my hearing, but what if..."
"Sturgis!" gasped Hermione, looking thunderstruck.
"Sorry?" said Ron, looking bewildered.
"Sturgis Podmore..." said Hermione breathlessly. "Arrested for trying to get through a door! Lucius Malfoy must have got him too! I bet he did it the day you saw him there, Harry. Sturgis had Moody's Invisibility Cloak, right? So, what if he was standing guard by the door, invisible, and Malfoy heard him move, or guessed someone was there, or just did the Imperius Curse on the off-chance there'd be a guard there? So, when Sturgis next had an opportunity, probably when it was his turn on guard duty again, he tried to get into the Department to steal the weapon for Voldemort. Ron, be quiet...but he got caught and sent to Azkaban..."
She gazed at Harry.
"And you say this Rookwood's told Voldemort how to get the weapon?" Y/n asked Harry now.
"I didn't hear all the conversation, but that's what it sounded like." said Harry. "Rookwood used to work there...maybe Voldemort'll send Rookwood to do it?"
Hermione nodded, apparently still lost in thought. Then, quite abruptly, she said. "But you shouldn't have seen this at all, Harry."
"What?" he said, taken aback.
"You're supposed to be learning how to close your mind to this sort of thing." said Hermione, suddenly stern.
"I know I am." said Harry. "But..."
"Well, I think we should just try and forget what you saw." said Hermione firmly. "And you ought to put in a bit more effort on your Occlumency from now on."
Harry was so angry with her he did not talk to her for the rest of the day, which proved to be another bad one. When people were not discussing the escaped Death Eaters in the corridors, they were laughing at Gryffindor's abysmal performance in their match against Hufflepuff, the Slytherins were singing Weasley is our King' so loudly and frequently that by sundown Filch had banned it from the corridors out of sheer irritation.
The weeks did not improve as they progressed. Harry received two more 'D's' in Potions, he was still on tenterhooks that Hagrid might get the sack, and he couldn't stop himself from dwelling on the dream in which he had been Voldemort...though he didn't bring it up with Ron, Y/n and Hermione again, he didn't want another telling-off from Hermione. He wished very much that he could have talked to Sirius about it, but that was out of the question, so he tried to push the matter to the back of his mind. To make matters worse Y/n had become so efficient at Occlumency that Snape deemed it useless for him to attend any further lessons, Harry would now be stuck with Snape alone.
Y/n and Hermione had just finished dinner when screams were heard coming from the Entrance Hall, they grew louder as Y/n and Hermione ran towards it, when they reached the Entrance Hall they could see it was packed, students had come flooding out of the Great Hall, where dinner was still in progress, to see what was going on while others had crammed themselves on to the marble staircase.
"Come on." Y/n said taking hold of Hermione's hand and helping pull her through the crowd to the front where they saw that the onlookers had formed a great ring, some of them looking shocked, others even frightened. Professor McGonagall was nearby and she looked as though what she was watching made her feel faintly sick.
Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the Entrance Hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad. Her hair was sticking up on end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other, her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart at the seams. Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upside-down, it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her. Professor Trelawney was staring, apparently terrified, at someone standing at the foot of the stairs.
"No!" she shrieked. "No! This cannot be happening...it cannot...I refuse to accept it!"
"You didn't realise this was coming?" said a high girlish voice, sounding callously amused, and Y/n felt Hermione's grip on his hand tighten. It was Umbridge who had spoken. "Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow's weather, you must surely have realised that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable that you would be sacked?"
"You c...can't!" howled Professor Trelawney, tears streaming down her face from behind her enormous lenses. "You c...can't sack me! I've b...been here sixteen years! H...Hogwarts is m...my h...home!"
"It was your home." said Professor Umbridge, and Y/n was disgusted to see the enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney sink, sobbing uncontrollably, on to one of her trunks. "Until an hour ago, when the Minister for Magic countersigned your Order of Dismissal. Now kindly remove yourself from this Hall. You are embarrassing us."
But she stood and watched, with an expression of gloating enjoyment, as Professor Trelawney shuddered and moaned, rocking backwards and forwards on her trunk in paroxysms of grief. Harry who was watching from the opposite side heard a muffled sob to his left and looked around. Lavender and Parvati were both crying quietly, their arms round each other. Then he heard footsteps.
Professor McGonagall had broken away from the spectators, marched straight up to Professor Trelawney and was patting her firmly on the back while withdrawing a large handkerchief from within her robes. "There, there, Sybill ...calm down...blow your nose on this...it's not as bad as you think, now... you are not going to have to leave Hogwarts..."
"Oh really, Professor McGonagall?" said Umbridge in a deadly voice, taking a few steps forward. "And your authority for that statement is..."
"That would be mine." said a deep voice.
The oaken front doors had swung open. Students beside them scuttled out of the way as Dumbledore appeared in the entrance. What he had been doing out in the grounds no one could imagine, but there was something impressive about the sight of him framed in the doorway against an oddly misty night. Leaving the doors wide open behind him he strode forwards through the circle of onlookers towards Professor Trelawney, tear-stained and trembling, on her trunk, Professor McGonagall alongside her.
"Yours, Professor Dumbledore?" said Umbridge, with a singularly unpleasant little laugh. "I'm afraid you do not understand the position. I have here..." she pulled a parchment scroll from within her robes. "An Order of Dismissal signed by myself and the Minister for Magic. Under the terms of Educational Decree Number Twenty-three, the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts has the power to inspect, place upon probation and sack any teacher she...that is to say, I...feel is not performing to the standards required by the Ministry of Magic. I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch. I have dismissed her."
Dumbledore however continued to smile. He looked down at Professor Trelawney, who was still sobbing and choking on her trunk, and said. "You are quite right, of course, Professor Umbridge. As High Inquisitor you have every right to dismiss my teachers. You do not, however, have the authority to send them away from the castle. I am afraid." He went on, with a courteous little bow. "That the power to do that still resides with the Headmaster, and it is my wish that Professor Trelawney continue to live at Hogwarts."
At this, Professor Trelawney gave a wild little laugh in which a hiccough was barely hidden. "No...no, I'll g...go, Dumbledore! I sh...shall...leave Hogwarts and s...seek my fortune elsewhere..."
"No." said Dumbledore sharply. "It is my wish that you remain, Sybill." He turned to Professor McGonagall. "Might I ask you to escort Sybill back upstairs, Professor McGonagall?
"Of course." said McGonagall. Up you get, Sybill..."
Professor Sprout came hurrying forwards out of the crowd and grabbed Professor Trelawney's other arm. Together, they guided her past Umbridge and up the marble stairs. Professor Flitwick went scurrying after them, his wand held out before him, he squeaked "Locomotor trunks!" and Professor Trelawney's luggage rose into the air and proceeded up the staircase after her, Professor Flitwick bringing up the rear.
Professor Umbridge was standing stock still, staring at Dumbledore, who continued to smile benignly.
"And what." she said, in a whisper that carried all around the Eintrance Hall. "Are you going to do with her once I appoint a new Divination teacher who needs her lodgings?"
"Oh, that won't be a problem." said Dumbledore pleasantly. "You see, I have already found us a new Divination teacher, and he will prefer lodgings on the ground floor."
"You've found..." said Umbridge shrilly. "You've found? Might I remind you, Dumbledore, that under Educational Decree Number Twenty-two..."
"The Ministry has the right to appoint a suitable candidate if...and only if...the Headmaster is unable to find one." said Dumbledore. "And I am happy to say that on this occasion I have succeeded. May I introduce you?"
He turned to face the open front doors, through which night mist was now drifting. Y/n heard hooves. There was a shocked murmur around the Hall and those nearest the doors hastily moved even further backwards, some of them tripping over in their haste to clear a path for the newcomer.
Through the mist came a face Y/n had seen once before on a dark, dangerous night in the Forbidden Forest, white-blond hair and astonishingly blue eyes, the head and torso of a man joined to the palomino body of a horse.
"This is Firenze." said Dumbledore happily to a thunderstruck Umbridge. "I think you'll find him suitable."