The Wrong Grate

Harry still couldn't quite believe he was free.

Every morning he woke under the sloping orange ceiling and had to work it out all over again, No bars. No cat-flap. No bolt on the outside of the door. And every morning, once he'd got it, he lay there for a minute with his eyes shut and let it sink in.

The Dursleys had been orderly people. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had built their whole lives, and Dudley's, round a neat, tidy, upper-middle-class sort of order, with the lawn edged and the car washed and the net curtains just so, and they'd measured everybody they met against it. Nobody ever quite came up to the mark. Those who were above it, the people with the bigger car or the golf club membership, the Dursleys were deferential to in public and resentful of in private, over the washing-up. Those below it, and there were a great many of those, the Dursleys treated with contempt, and used them, as Harry had worked out at about the age of eight, to prove to themselves how hard-working and decent they were by comparison.

The Burrow in comparison burst at the seams with life and character and unexpected chaos, at least by anything Harry was used to. The Weasleys had lived in the middle of it all their lives and thought nothing of the mirror over the kitchen mantelpiece telling Harry, 'Tuck your shirt in, young man, honestly, the state of you,' every time he passed it, or of the ghoul in the attic howling for sacrifices down the pipes, which was all very well at breakfast and somewhat less so at three in the morning with Harry's pillow over his head.

'Does he ever stop?' Harry asked Ron, the first night.

'Only when Mum goes up with the poker,' said Ron sleepily. 'You get used to it.'

Harry didn't, quite. But what he couldn't get used to at all, what he still didn't know what to do with, was the strange and unlikely fact that everybody in the house seemed to like him.

Mrs Weasley fussed over the state of his socks and tried to force fourth helpings on him at every meal. She was motherly about it, but she was also very firm and very insistent, and Harry, who'd never been made to eat more of anything in his life, ate it. Mr Weasley liked Harry to sit beside him at dinner so that he could pepper him with questions about living with Muggles, and have things like plugs and the postal service explained to him.

'Fascinating!' he said, as Harry took him through how a telephone worked. 'And the voice goes down the wire? Ingenious, really, how many ways Muggles have found of getting along without magic.'

'Arthur,' said Mrs Weasley, with the look of long suffering that Harry had started to recognise, 'has been on at Professor McGonagall about her telephone every time he's run into her for the last fifteen years. She's got one, you see, Harry, and a great many friends in the Muggle world.'

Something in the way she said it made Harry look up.

'Professor McGonagall is a sweetheart, Harry. But I know where she's been and who she knows. Pay it no mind, dear.'

She said it to reassure him, and Harry didn't find it reassuring in the least. He thought of Kosovo, and Kandahar, and a place called Zanzibar Land, and of the way Professor McGonagall had come up behind him and Ron outside the third-floor corridor without a sound, and put it all in the drawer in his head marked later, with the rest.

He was quite sure of one thing. If it were up to him, he'd never leave the Burrow again except for Hogwarts. He loved it. And over the next few days he felt his strength come back, meal by meal, until he could run up all five flights to Ron's room without stopping, and with it came something else he'd lost when Uncle Vernon turned the key in his door. The thing he'd found at Hogwarts. The thing that didn't let go of broomsticks.

The letters from school came one bright morning about a week after he'd arrived.

He and Ron went down to breakfast and found Mr and Mrs Weasley and Ginny already at the table, and the moment Ginny saw Harry she knocked her porridge bowl off the table with a clatter that made everybody jump. She was very prone to knocking things over whenever Harry came into a room. She dived under the table for the bowl and came up with her face the colour of a sunset, and Harry, who had no idea what to do about it, did what he always did, which was to pretend he hadn't noticed and take the toast Mrs Weasley was holding out.

'Letters from school,' said Mr Weasley, and passed Harry and Ron two identical envelopes of yellowish parchment, addressed in green ink. 'Dumbledore already knows you're here, Harry. Molly, uh, well... he knows. He really knows, now.'

He gave an awkward laugh that said as much as Mrs Weasley's long-suffering look did, and Harry wondered what, exactly, Mrs Weasley had said to Albus Dumbledore. Then he opened his letter and forgot about it.

For a few minutes there was no sound but parchment. Harry's letter told him to catch the Hogwarts Express from King's Cross as usual on September the first, and listed the books he'd need for the year.

Second-year students will require:

The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 by Miranda Goshawk

Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart

Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart

Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart

Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart

Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart

Wanderings with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart

Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart

Fred, who'd finished his own list, leaned over to look at Harry's.

'You've been told to get all Lockhart's books too!' he said. 'The new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan. Bet it's a witch. One of those barmy middle-aged ones with a load of cats and...'

Fred caught his mother's eye, stopped talking, and became very interested in the marmalade.

'That lot won't come cheap,' said George, with a quick glance at his parents. 'Lockhart's books are really expensive...'

'Well, we'll manage,' said Mrs Weasley, but she looked worried. 'I expect we'll be able to pick up a lot of Ginny's things second-hand.'

'Oh, you're starting Hogwarts this year? That's brilliant. It's so wonderful there. You'll love it,' Harry said enthusiastically.

Ginny went scarlet, nodded so hard her hair bounced, and put both elbows in the butter dish, and apologised to it.

'I can help with the books,' Harry said. He'd been wanting to say it for a week. 'I'll buy them all for you myself.'

Down in a vault under London there was a small fortune his parents had left him, and it had done nothing for a year but sit there. It was wizard money, of course. You couldn't spend a Galleon in a Muggle shop, and he'd never breathed a word about Gringotts to the Dursleys, because he had a feeling their horror of magic might not stretch quite as far as a large heap of gold.

'No, that's quite all right, Harry dear,' said Mrs Weasley, kindly, and quite firmly.

'But Mrs Weasley, I've got the money, and I want to help after all you've done.'

Ron's hand landed on his shoulder and stayed there.

'We'll manage, Harry. We always have. It wouldn't be right to take advantage of you like that,' said Mrs Weasley, in the voice that ended arguments.

Harry didn't understand it. He had more money than he knew what to do with, the Weasleys never had enough, and he wanted to help the people who'd taken him in more than he'd ever wanted anything, and every time he tried, Mrs Weasley turned him down, kindly, firmly, and without the smallest crack to get a finger into. He was still chewing on it when Percy came in.

Percy was already dressed, with his prefect badge pinned to a knitted tank top.

'Morning, all,' he said briskly. 'Lovely day.'

He sat down in the only empty chair and shot up out of it again, holding what Harry took for a moulting grey feather duster, until he saw that it was breathing.

'Errol!' said Ron. He took the limp owl off Percy and pulled a letter from under its wing. 'Finally. He's got Hermione's answer. I wrote to her saying we were going to try and rescue you from the Dursleys.'

He carried Errol to the perch by the back door and tried to stand him on it, and Errol fell straight off, so Ron laid him on the draining board instead, muttering, 'Pathetic,' and tore open the letter and read it out.

Dear Ron, and Harry if you're there,

I hope everything went all right and that Harry is OK and that you didn't do anything illegal to get him out, Ronald, because that would get Harry into trouble too. I've been really worried, and if Harry is all right will you please let me know AT ONCE, but perhaps it would be better if you used a different owl, because I think another delivery might finish your one off.

I'm very busy with schoolwork, of course...

'How can she be?' said Ron, in horror. 'We're on holiday!'

... and we're going to London next Wednesday to buy my new books. Why don't we meet in Diagon Alley? Let me know what's happening as soon as you can. Love from Hermione.

'Well, that fits in nicely, we can get all your things then too,' said Mrs Weasley, starting to clear the table. 'What are you all up to today?'

Harry, Ron, Fred and George were going up the hill to the little paddock the Weasleys owned. It was ringed with trees that hid it from the village, so that they could practise Quidditch there as long as they didn't fly too high, and Harry, who hadn't been near his broom since June, was one small, twelve-year-old ball of excitement about it. They couldn't use real Quidditch balls, which would have taken some explaining if one had got away over the village, so they threw apples for each other to catch. They took turns on the Nimbus Two Thousand, which was easily the best broom among them. Ron's old Shooting Star was regularly overtaken by passing butterflies.

'Dean would have a fit,' said Harry, on the third morning, as Ron came puffing in on it three lengths behind an admiral. 'He'd want a transfer.'

'Dean can have it,' said Ron.

They'd asked Percy if he wanted to come, and he'd muttered something about being busy. Harry had only seen him at mealtimes. The rest of the time he was shut in his room.

'Wish I knew what he was up to,' said Fred, frowning, as they marched up the hill with their brooms over their shoulders. 'He's not himself. His exam results came the day before you did. Twelve O.W.L.s, and he hardly gloated at all.'

'Ordinary Wizarding Levels,' George explained, at Harry's look. 'Bill got twelve too. If we're not careful we'll have another Head Boy in the family. I don't think I could stand the shame.'

Bill was the eldest Weasley. He and Charlie, the next one down, had both left Hogwarts, and Harry had never met either of them, but he knew that Charlie was in Romania with the dragons and Bill in Egypt, working for Gringotts.

'Dunno how Mum and Dad are going to afford all our school stuff this year,' said George, after a while. 'Five sets of Lockhart books! And Ginny needs robes and a wand and everything...'

Harry said nothing. He felt awkward about it, and he wanted to say, all over again, that he'd happily pay for the lot and more besides. But Mrs Weasley had made herself clear, and he'd no wish to annoy her, so he kept his mouth shut and threw an apple at Fred instead.

Mrs Weasley had them all up early on the Wednesday.

Breakfast was half a dozen bacon sandwiches each, and they were divine. Harry had come to the conclusion over the past week that Mrs Weasley was the best cook he'd ever met, and he'd have said so if he hadn't had his mouth full. Then they pulled on their coats, and Mrs Weasley took a flowerpot down off the kitchen mantelpiece and looked into it.

'We're running low, Arthur,' she sighed. 'We'll have to buy some more today... ah, well. Guests first! After you, Harry dear!'

She held out the flowerpot.

Harry looked at it. Then he looked at the ring of faces, all watching him.

'Uh, is that for gardening?' he asked.

'Mum, he's never travelled by Floo powder,' said Ron suddenly. 'Sorry, Harry, I forgot.'

'Never?' said Mr Weasley. 'But how did you get to Diagon Alley for your school things last year?'

'I went on the Underground with Hagrid. He barely fit through the barriers.'

'Really?' Mr Weasley lit up. 'Were there escapators? How exactly...'

'That's QUITE all right, Arthur dear. Stop harassing the poor boy.' Mrs Weasley turned back to Harry. 'Floo powder's a lot quicker, dear, but goodness me, if you've never used it before...'

'He'll be all right, Mum,' said Fred. 'Harry, watch us first.'

He took a pinch of glittering powder out of the pot, stepped up to the fire, and threw it into the flames. With a roar, the fire went emerald green and shot up taller than Fred, who stepped straight into it, shouted, 'Diagon Alley!' and was gone.

He'd made it look as easy as feeding a ticket into the barrier on the Tube. Harry stared at the place where Fred had been. Fred had just been swallowed by green fire and sent, in the space of a word, to a street in London, and everybody in the kitchen was behaving as though he'd stepped on to a bus. Harry seemed to be the only person in the room who thought it was a miracle. He was also, he suspected, the only one who thought it might kill him.

Mrs Weasley saw his face.

'Don't worry. You must speak clearly, dear,' she told him, as George dipped into the flowerpot. 'And mind you get out at the right grate...'

'You what?' said Harry. 'How do I even tell what the right grate is?'

He was going for his usual dryness, and George went up in green flames in the middle of it, Mrs Weasley heard what was underneath the dryness as plainly as if he'd said it.

'Well, there are an awful lot of wizard fires to choose from, you know, but as long as you've spoken clearly...'

'He'll be fine, Molly, don't fuss,' said Mr Weasley, helping himself to powder.

'But Mum, if he got lost, how would we ever explain things to his aunt and unc-'

'He's not going back there, Ronald!'

It came out louder than she'd meant it to. There was a short silence in the kitchen. Then Mr Weasley reached over and took his wife's hand, and held it, and gave her a look, and she gave him one back, and Harry, watching them, thought that it was so wonderful to see two people who'd been married for as long as that still look at each other like that. It was one more thing he'd never seen at Privet Drive.

'It's not going to be a problem,' Mrs Weasley said, much more quietly.

'They wouldn't mind,' Harry reassured her, with an awkward laugh. 'Dudley would think it was a brilliant joke if I got lost up a chimney. Don't worry about that.'

'I've got nothing to laugh about in regard to those nasty Muggles yet. But I will soon enough.'

Mrs Weasley smiled at him, very sweetly, and Harry smiled back, and didn't see how far down the darkness in her eyes went, because none of it was pointed at him.

'Well... all right... you go after Arthur,' she said. 'Now, when you get into the fire, say where you're going...'

'And keep your elbows tucked in,' Ron advised.

'And your eyes shut,' said Mrs Weasley. 'The soot...'

'Don't fidget,' said Ron. 'Or you might well fall out of the wrong fireplace...'

It was a great deal to remember.

'Sounds easy enough,' Harry said drily.

'But don't panic and get out too early. Wait until you see Fred and George.'

'Right, yeah,' Harry replied.

He took a pinch of Floo powder, with all of it going round his head at once, and walked up to the edge of the fire. He took a deep breath, threw the powder into the flames, and stepped forward.

The fire was like a warm breeze. He opened his mouth, and swallowed a great lungful of hot ash.

'D-Dia-gon Alley,' he coughed.

It was as though he'd been sucked down a giant plughole. He was spinning, very fast, and the roaring in his ears was deafening. He tried to keep his eyes open and the whirl of green made him want to be sick. Something hard cracked him on the elbow and he clamped it to his side, still spinning. Now cold hands seemed to be slapping at his face. Squinting through his glasses he saw a blurred stream of fireplaces going past, and glimpses of the rooms beyond them, and the bacon sandwiches turned over in his stomach. He shut his eyes and wished it would stop, and then...

He fell. Face first, on to cold stone, and heard his glasses go.

Dizzy, bruised, and black with soot, he got up carefully and held the broken glasses to his eyes. He was alone. Where he was, he had no idea. He was standing in the stone fireplace of what looked like a large, dim wizard's shop, a place that frankly looked like what Mr Weasley would call a Pikey's Picnic.

A glass case near him held a withered hand on a cushion, a bloodstained pack of cards, and a glass eye that seemed to be looking at him. Masks leered down from the walls. An assortment of human bones lay across the counter, and rusty, spiked things hung from the ceiling on chains. Worse, the narrow, dark street he could see through the grimy window was definitely not Diagon Alley.

The sooner he was out of here, the better.

With his nose still stinging from the hearth, he started quickly and quietly for the door, and he hadn't got halfway to it when two people appeared on the other side of the glass. One of them was the very last person on earth Harry wanted to meet while lost, covered in soot, and holding his glasses together with his thumb. The person who, in all likelihood, had sent Dobby to Privet Drive, and so sent Harry to three days behind a locked door.

Dracina Malfoy.

Harry looked wildly round, saw a big black cabinet on his left, shot into it and pulled the doors to, leaving a crack to see through. A second later a bell clanged and Malfoy came into the shop.

This was so bloody typical of her. Stupid Malfoy, and her stupid twinkle. Harry swore to himself, inside the cabinet, that he'd pay her back for every one of those three days, and then had to give the whole of his attention to not sneezing, because the cabinet was a hundred years deep in dust.

The man who came in behind her could only have been her father. He had the same pale, pointed face, and the same silver eyes, except that hers sparkled and his were cold as a coin. He crossed the shop, looking idly at the things on display, rang a bell on the counter, and turned to his daughter.

'These are dangerous objects, Dracina. Not toys or make-up. Leave them alone!' he said softly.

Malfoy, who'd been reaching for the glass eye, said, 'I thought you were going to buy me a present.'

'I said I'd buy you a racing broom,' said her father, drumming his fingers on the counter.

'What's the good of that if I'm not on the house team?' said Malfoy, with her lower lip out, as spoilt as Harry had ever seen her. There was no twinkle in her eyes at all. Not that Harry noticed. Stupid, spoilt Malfoy. 'Harry Potter got a Nimbus Two Thousand last year. Special permission from Dumbledore, so he could play for Gryffindor. He's not even that good, it's only because he's famous... famous for having a stupid scar on his forehead...'

'Yes, sweetie,' said Lucius Malfoy, and the look on his face was precisely the one Mrs Weasley gave her husband when he got going on microwaves and video recorders.

She's still cross with me, Harry thought, in the cabinet, and felt a small, unworthy triumph at having annoyed her so thoroughly.

Malfoy bent to look along a shelf of skulls, and said, 'Yuck,' loudly.

'Ugh, everyone thinks he's so smart, wonderful Potter, with his scar and his broomstick -.'

'You have told me this at least a dozen times already,' said Mr Malfoy, with a quelling look at his daughter. 'More, even. And I would remind you that it is not prudent for a young witch to seem so obsessed about a young wizard. People will start to whisper, and...'

'I am not obsessed with that stupid Potter!' Malfoy shouted, so loudly that several of the cursed and no doubt evil objects on the shelves rattled.

'Of course, Dracina. As you say... so many times,' Lucius sighed.

He turned away from her, and Harry heard him mutter something under his breath, irritably, that he could only just catch. Something about Cissy putting fanciful ideas about the cursed Potter boy in her...

Whoever Cissy was, and whatever Lucius Malfoy had been about to let slip, Harry never found out, because a man had appeared behind the counter.

'Ah, Mr Borgin.'

The man was stooped, and he was smoothing greasy hair back from his forehead.

'Mr Malfoy, what a pleasure to see you again,' said Mr Borgin, in a voice as oily as his hair. 'Delighted. And young Mistress Malfoy too, delightful. How may I be of assistance? I must show you, just in today, and very reasonably priced...'

Lucius Malfoy raised one black-gloved hand, and Mr Borgin stopped as if he'd been switched off. The smile stayed where it was. The man underneath it was plainly afraid.

'I'm not buying today, Mr Borgin, but selling,' said Mr Malfoy.

'Selling?' The smile slipped a little.

'You will have heard, of course, that the Ministry is conducting more raids,' said Mr Malfoy. He drew a roll of parchment from inside his robes and unrolled it on the counter for Mr Borgin to read. 'I have a few... ah... items at home that need to be discreetly moved along, if the Ministry were to call...'

Mr Borgin nodded wisely, fixed a pince-nez on his nose, and ran his eye down the list.

'The Ministry wouldn't presume to trouble you, sir, surely?'

Mr Malfoy's lip curled. It was, Harry thought, exactly the way Dracina's lip had curled when Hermione told her where the Malfoys had come from.

'I have not been visited yet. The name Malfoy still commands a certain respect. Yet the Ministry grows ever more meddlesome. There are rumours of a new Muggle Protection Act, and no doubt that flea-bitten, Muggle-loving fool Arthur Weasley is behind it...'

Something hot went up through Harry's chest. Mr Weasley was a lovely man. He was a good man, worth more than every piece of Norman plunder the Malfoys had ever got their hands on.

'... and as you see, certain of these poisons might make it appear...'

'I understand, sir, of course,' said Mr Borgin. 'Let me see...'

'Ewwww, what is that disgusting thing, Father?' Dracina interrupted, pointing at the withered hand on its cushion.

'Ah, the Hand of Glory!' Mr Borgin abandoned the list at once and scurried over to her, managing to sound deferential and defensive both at once. 'Insert a candle and it gives light only to the holder! Best friend of thieves and plunderers! A wondrous...'

He tailed off. Dracina was looking at the hand with an expression of such disgust that it had stopped him dead.

'I hope my daughter will amount to more than a thief or a plunderer, Borgin,' said Mr Malfoy, and laid a hand on Dracina's shoulder, quite gently.

'No offence, sir, no offence meant...'

'Though if her school marks don't pick up,' said Mr Malfoy, 'that may indeed be all she is fit for.'

'It's not my fault,' Dracina retorted, pouting. 'The teachers all have favourites. That Hermione Granger...' She stopped, and then said, in a lower voice and with a good deal more feeling, 'One day I'll make stupid Potter realise how dreadful that Mudblood is.'

'I would have thought you'd be ashamed that a girl of no wizard family beat you in every exam,' snapped Mr Malfoy.

'Ha!' Harry breathed, in the cabinet. It did him good to see Dracina Malfoy told off.

'I'm sorry, Father,' Dracina said. She said it sadly, with her eyes on the floor.

And Harry, watching her through the crack, found that he'd stopped being pleased, and was sorry he'd ever started. Why did he have such annoying thoughts? She was his enemy. His arch-enemy. He'd no business feeling anything at all about her eyes being on the floor.

'It's the same all over,' said Mr Borgin, oilier than ever. 'Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere...'

'Not with me,' said Mr Malfoy, and his long nostrils flared.

'No, sir, nor with me, sir,' said Mr Borgin, with a bow so deep that Uncle Vernon, who had bowed to a good many bank managers in his time, would have been forced to admire it.

'In that case, perhaps we can return to my list,' said Mr Malfoy shortly. 'I am in something of a hurry, Borgin. I have important business elsewhere today.'

They began to haggle.

Harry watched, with his heart going, as Dracina wandered nearer and nearer to the cabinet, looking over the things for sale. She gasped suddenly and darted to a glass case where a necklace of opals lay on black velvet, and stood over it with her hands pressed together, and Harry had never seen her look so plainly delighted by anything. She'd drawn breath to call her father over when she read the card beside it. Caution: Do Not Touch. Cursed. Has Claimed the Lives of Nineteen Muggle Owners to Date.

She pouted. Another prize denied her.

She turned away from the case, and found herself looking straight at the cabinet. She walked up to it. She put out her hand for the handle.

Harry would have sworn, if his heart hadn't been in his mouth.

'Done,' said Mr Malfoy, at the counter. 'Come, Dracina!'

She turned away. Harry wiped his forehead on his sleeve.

'Good day to you, Mr Borgin. I'll expect you at the manor tomorrow to collect the goods.'

The moment the door had shut behind them, Mr Borgin dropped the oil.

'Good day yourself, Mister Malfoy, and if the stories are true, you haven't sold me half of what's hidden in your manor...'

Muttering darkly, he went through into a back room. Rubbing his hands.

Harry gave it a minute, in case he came back. Then, as quietly as he could, he got out of the cabinet, slipped past the glass cases, and out of the door.

Holding his broken glasses to his face, he looked about him.

He was in a dingy alley that seemed to consist of nothing but shops devoted to the Dark Arts. The one he'd just come out of, Borgin and Burkes, was the biggest, but the window opposite was full of shrunken heads, and two doors down a large cage seethed with enormous black spiders. Two shabby wizards were watching him from the shadow of a doorway and muttering to each other.

Feeling very jumpy, Harry set off, holding his glasses straight and hoping against hope for a way out. An old wooden sign over a shop selling poisonous candles told him he was in Knockturn Alley, which was no help at all, since he'd never heard of it. He supposed he hadn't spoken clearly enough through the ash. Bloody esoteric wizarding transport. How did they ever get anything done, when one sneeze or one slurred syllable landed you in some dark junk shop full of people who'd happily chop you up and pickle you for potions?

He tried to think calmly about what to do.

An old witch had stepped into his path. She was holding a tray of what looked horribly like whole human fingernails, and she leered at him with a mouthful of mossy teeth.

Harry backed away.

'No, you're alright,' he said. 'I'm just -'

'HARRY! What d'yeh think yer doin' down there?'

Harry's heart leapt. So did the witch; a cascade of fingernails went over her feet, and she swore as the enormous shape of Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, came striding up the alley with his beetle-black eyes flashing over his beard.

'Hagrid!' Harry croaked. 'I was lost... Bloody Floo powder...'

Hagrid got him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him away from the witch, knocking the tray clean out of her hands, and her shrieks followed them all the way along the twisting alley and out into the sunshine. Harry saw a familiar snow-white building in the distance. Gringotts. Hagrid had steered him straight into Diagon Alley.

'Yer a mess!' said Hagrid gruffly, and he began brushing the soot off Harry so hard that he nearly knocked him into a barrel of dragon dung outside the apothecary's. 'Skulkin' round Knockturn Alley, I dunno. Dodgy place, Harry. Don' want no one ter see yeh down there...'

'Oh no, I'm sure the dodgy shop full of cursed knick-knacks and the woman selling toenails is just giving a bad impression to an otherwise reputable area,' said Harry sarcastically, with a venomous look back at the mouth of the alley, and then ducked as Hagrid came at him again with the brushing. 'I told you, I was lost. What were you doing down there, anyway?'

'I was lookin' fer a Flesh-Eatin' Slug Repellent,' growled Hagrid. 'They're ruinin' the school cabbages. Yer not on yer own?'

'I'm staying with the Weasleys, but we got separated,' Harry explained. 'I've got to go and find them...'

They set off together down the street.

'How come yeh never wrote back ter me?' said Hagrid, as Harry jogged beside him, three steps to every one of Hagrid's boots.

Harry told him. Dobby, and the letters, and the pudding, and the Dursleys, and the lock, and what, precisely, he intended to do to Dobby the next time their paths crossed, which took some time and made Hagrid whistle.

'Harry! Harry! Over here!'

Harry looked up and saw Hermione Granger at the top of the white steps of Gringotts. She came down them at a run, very fast and very straight, with her bushy hair streaming behind her and her eyes never once leaving him.

'What happened to your glasses? Who did this to you? Are they nearby so I can... talk to them. Oh, hello, Hagrid. Are you coming into Gringotts, Harry?'

She fired it all at him like a machine gun, with the same fierce concentration she'd turned on him ever since the troll, and had one hand on his arm before she'd finished. Hermione was lovely, Harry thought. She was also very strange, and he'd never got to the bottom of it.

'As soon as I've found the Weasleys,' said Harry.

'Yeh won't have long ter wait,' grinned Hagrid.

Harry and Hermione looked round. Ron, Fred, George, Percy and Mr Weasley were sprinting up the crowded street towards them.

'Harry,' panted Mr Weasley, mopping his bald patch. 'We hoped you'd only gone one grate too far...'

'More than one grate, Mr Weasley,' Harry said, trying extremely hard not to sound as dry about it as he felt.

'Molly's frantic. She's coming now.'

'Where did you come out?' Ron asked.

'Knockturn Alley,' said Hagrid grimly.

'Brilliant!' said Fred and George together.

'We've never been allowed in,' said Ron enviously.

'I should ruddy well think not,' growled Hagrid.

Mrs Weasley came galloping into view with her handbag swinging from one hand and Ginny clinging to the other.

'Oh, Harry... oh, my dear... you could have been anywhere...'

Still gasping for breath, she pulled a big clothes brush out of her bag and set about the soot Hagrid had missed, and Harry stood and let her, and found himself unexpectedly moved by it. She'd run the length of Diagon Alley for him. She was fussy, he supposed, and a little overwhelming, and he wouldn't have heard a bad word said against her. Mr Weasley took Harry's glasses, tapped them with his wand, and handed them back as good as new.

'Well, gotta be off,' said Hagrid, while Mrs Weasley wrung his hand ('Knockturn Alley! If you hadn't found him, Hagrid!'). 'See yer at Hogwarts!'

And off he went up the street, a head and shoulders above everyone in it, and left Harry to the mercy of Mrs Weasley's brush and Hermione, who had taken hold of his sleeve again and was telling him, at great length, and more than once, how much she'd missed him.

Ron caught Harry's eye over her head. It was a look of pure sympathy. Then he said, 'Hermione, what did you reckon to the booklist? Seven Lockharts. Seven. Is that normal?' and Hermione turned on him like a lamp, and Harry got his sleeve back. Ron was a good friend. He was also, Harry was beginning to notice, surprisingly good at steering Hermione.

'Guess who I saw in Borgin and Burkes?' Harry said to the pair of them, as they climbed the steps to Gringotts. 'Malfoy and her father. She's bloody steaming with me. Talks about me all the time with her dad,' Harry said, with some pride.

He said it proudly enough not to notice Ron's knowing look, or the way Ron rubbed his ear where Malfoy had bitten it. He didn't notice, either, the cold, furious glance that Hermione gave, not quite at him, but at the idea of it. Of that girl. Talking about Harry. All the time.

'She's VERY dangerous, Harry,' Hermione said, in a voice so strange that Harry decided not to say any more about it. Malfoy was stupid anyway. And if he wasn't careful he'd end up as obsessed with her as she apparently was with him, and he wasn't, and he never would be, and that was that.

'Did Lucius Malfoy buy anything?' said Mr Weasley sharply, behind them, with a hand at his chin.

'No. He was selling.'

'So he's worried,' said Mr Weasley, with grim satisfaction. 'Oh, I'd love to nick Lucius Malfoy for something...'

He said it with a relish that spoke of history.

'You be careful, Arthur,' said Mrs Weasley sharply, as a bowing goblin showed them in. 'That family's trouble. Don't go biting off more than you can chew.'

'So you don't think I'm a match for Lucius Malfoy?' said Mr Weasley indignantly, but he was distracted at once by the sight of Hermione's parents, who were standing nervously at the long marble counter waiting for their daughter to introduce them.

They looked exactly as Hermione had described them. Respectable, mild, and so thoroughly middle class that Harry could have told you the make of their car.

'But you're Muggles!' said Mr Weasley, as if they'd done it on purpose to please him. 'We must have a drink! What's that you've got there? Oh, you're changing Muggle money. Molly, look!' He pointed with delight at the ten-pound notes in Mr Granger's hand.

'Meet you back here,' Ron said to Hermione, as a goblin led the Weasleys and Harry away to the vaults.

The vaults were reached by small goblin-driven carts that hurtled along miniature railway tracks through the tunnels under the bank, and Harry enjoyed every second of the ride, and felt dreadful, worse than he'd felt in Knockturn Alley, when the Weasleys' vault swung open. There was a very small pile of Sickles in it, and one gold Galleon, and that was all. Mrs Weasley felt right into the corners before she swept the lot into her bag.

He felt worse still at his own vault. Mrs Weasley had been perfectly clear. But he still felt greedy, and selfish, and useless, standing in front of a heap of gold he'd done nothing to earn while the kindest family he'd ever met counted Sickles. He put himself between the door and the pile and shovelled coins into a leather bag as fast as he could, and tried once more, quietly, to press a handful on Mrs Weasley, and was once more very kindly and very firmly refused.

She did let him buy her a box of Chocolate Frogs, from the trolley by the doors, as a thank-you for everything. For some reason Harry couldn't work out, it very nearly made her cry. She pulled herself together and told him not to be so silly, and put the box in her bag very carefully, as if it might break.

Out on the steps they all split up. Percy mumbled about needing a new quill, still looking drained and miserable. Fred and George had spotted their friend Lee Jordan across the street and went off towards him chanting his name to a tune Dean Thomas had taught the whole of Gryffindor, with their arms in the air. Mrs Weasley and Ginny were going to a second-hand robe shop. Mr Weasley was insisting on taking the Grangers to the Leaky Cauldron for a drink, and from where the Grangers stood it looked a good deal more like a kidnapping, with Mr Weasley towing them up the street and talking about television sets and asking whether it was true that the dishes on the roofs were for catching flying saucers.

'We'll all meet at Flourish and Blotts in an hour to buy your school books,' said Mrs Weasley, setting off with Ginny. 'And not one step down Knockturn Alley!' she shouted after the twins' backs.

Harry, Ron and Hermione wandered off along the winding cobbles. The bag of gold and silver and bronze was jangling in Harry's pocket and asking to be spent, so he bought three enormous strawberry-and-peanut-butter ice-creams, and they ate them as they walked, looking in the windows. Ron stood for a long time in front of a full set of Chudley Cannons robes in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, until Hermione dragged them next door for ink and parchment. In Gambol and Japes they found Fred, George and Lee Jordan stocking up on Dr Filibuster's Fabulous Wet-Start, No-Heat Fireworks, and in a tiny junk shop full of broken wands, wonky brass scales and old cloaks stiff with potion stains they found Percy, deep in a small and deeply boring book called Prefects Who Gained Power.

'"A study of Hogwarts prefects and their later careers",' Ron read off the back. 'That sounds fascinating...'

'Go away,' Percy snapped.

'Course, he's very ambitious, Percy. He's got it all planned out... he wants to be Minister of Magic... He's got ideas that'd make Grindelwald tell him to steady on,' Ron told Harry and Hermione in an undertone, as they left Percy to it.

An hour later they made for Flourish and Blotts, and they were far from the only ones. There was a crowd outside the doors, jostling to get in, and the reason for it hung across the upper windows on a banner:

GILDEROY LOCKHART

will be signing copies of his autobiography

MAGICAL ME

today 12.30 to 4.30 p.m.

'We can actually meet him!' Hermione squealed. 'I mean, he's written almost the whole booklist!'

Ron sighed. It was the sigh of a man who's just found an unexploded bomb and been told it's his job to see to it.

'Mum's going to go as mental as Hermione,' he mumbled.

'I heard that, Ronald!' Hermione said, and gave him a look that would have curdled milk.

The crowd was made up mostly of witches about Mrs Weasley's age. It was, in nearly every particular, exactly as Fred had prophesied. A harassed wizard at the door was saying, 'Calmly, please, ladies... don't push, there... mind the books, now...' and Harry, Ron and Hermione squeezed in past him.

A long queue wound to the back of the shop, where Gilderoy Lockhart sat signing. They grabbed a copy of Break with a Banshee each and crept up the line to where the rest of the Weasleys stood with Mr and Mrs Granger.

'Oh, there you are, good,' said Mrs Weasley. She was breathless, and kept patting her hair. 'We'll be able to see him in a minute...'

Gilderoy Lockhart came slowly into view. He was sitting at a table surrounded by large portraits of his own face, every one of which was winking and flashing its teeth at the crowd. The real Lockhart wore robes of forget-me-not blue that matched his eyes exactly, and his pointed hat sat at a jaunty angle on his wavy hair, and if Harry was honest, there was metaphorically a faint whiff of lavender coming off him that reached halfway down the queue.

A short, bad-tempered man was dancing round the table taking photographs with a big black camera that let off a puff of purple smoke with every blinding flash.

'Out of the way, there,' he snarled at Ron, backing up for a better shot. 'This is for the Daily Prophet.'

'My fist'll be for the Daily Prophet if you don't give me some bloomin SPACE!' shouted Ron, rubbing the foot the photographer had trodden on.

Gilderoy Lockhart heard him. He looked up. He saw Ron. And then he saw Harry.

He stared.

Harry didn't like that stare at all. There was vanity in it, and something hungrier than vanity. It was the stare of a man who, on meeting anybody, asked himself one question only, which was what they could do for him, and had never in his life got as far as a second. Harry had met a few people like that. He wasn't impressed.

Lockhart leapt to his feet and positively shouted, 'It can't be Harry Potter?'

Harry really didn't like where this was going.

'Oh, no, uh... I just look a bit like him. I'm Barry Trotter. No relation at all,' Harry said nervously, hoping to nip it in the bud.

The crowd parted, whispering. Lockhart dived forward, seized Harry by the arm and hauled him to the front, laughing a big, booming laugh.

'Oh, you have a lovely sense of humour, Mr Potter.'

The crowd burst into applause. Harry's face burned as Lockhart pumped his hand for the photographer, who was clicking away like mad and wafting thick purple smoke over the Weasleys.

'Nice big smile, Harry,' said Lockhart through his own gleaming teeth. 'Together, you and I are worth the front page.'

When he finally let go, Harry couldn't feel his fingers. He tried to edge back towards the Weasleys, but Lockhart flung an arm round his shoulders and clamped him to his side with a grip that would have given Hermione a run for her money.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said loudly, waving for quiet. 'What an extraordinary moment this is! The perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I've been sitting on for some time! When young Harry here stepped into Flourish and Blotts today, he only wanted to buy my autobiography -'

'No, I didn't,' Harry said curtly.

Lockhart laughed again.

'Ha! What a wicked joker you are, Mr Potter. Anyway, I shall be happy to gift this book to Mr Potter free of charge. In the hopes this helps his Hero's Journey. That's Joseph Campbell, by the way. A Muggle, but a very smart man. A true warrior-scholar such as myself never turns my nose up at knowledge.'

He gave a chortle so smug that it would have made Malfoy look humble. Hermione, for once, wasn't looking at Harry at all. She was hanging off Lockhart's every word, and at the chortle she giggled like a schoolgirl, which to be fair was what she was. The three dozen middle-aged witches giggling in the same key behind her were a good deal more unsettling.

'He had no idea,' Lockhart went on, giving Harry a little shake that sent his glasses to the end of his nose, 'that he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, Magical Me. He and his schoolfellows will, in fact, be getting the real, magical me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!'

'God help us all,' Harry said.

He hadn't meant to say it out loud. Luckily the whooping and cheering drowned him out, and Harry found himself being presented with the entire works of Gilderoy Lockhart. The very large, very heavy, very numerous entire works. Staggering slightly under them, he got himself out of the limelight to the edge of the shop, where Ginny was standing beside her new cauldron.

'You have these,' Harry mumbled, and tipped the whole lot into it. 'I'll buy my own...'

'Bet you loved that, didn't you, Potter?' said a voice he had no trouble placing.

He straightened up and found himself nose to nose with Dracina Malfoy, wearing her usual sneer, and he had no time whatever for whichever game she was playing this afternoon.

'How's Dobby, Malfoy? I'd SO like to meet him again,' he said slyly.

The sneer went off her face as if it had been wiped. She went very serious, all at once, and the twinkle came up in her eyes, the one that was aimed at him and nobody else, and she leaned in close, oddly conspiratorial, as though she were about to tell him something that mattered.

'Good. Did you get my -.'

'Leave him alone, he didn't want all that!' said Ginny.

Malfoy noticed her for the first time.

It was the first thing Ginny had ever said in front of Harry. She was glaring up at Malfoy with her chin out and her face on fire, and standing, Harry realised, very slightly in front of him.

Malfoy blinked. She leaned back from Harry. And then, in the space of a breath, she looked angrier than Harry had ever seen her, angrier than when he'd caught the Remembrall, angrier than the night in the common room. Her hands had curled into fists at her sides.

'Stupid Potter, did you get yourself a girlfriend?' she hissed.

Ginny went scarlet to the roots of her hair. Ron and Hermione were fighting their way over through the crowd, both with armfuls of Lockhart.

'Oh, it's you,' said Ron, looking at Malfoy as if she were something he'd trodden in. 'Bet you're surprised to see Harry here, eh? After what nonsense you tried to pull.'

Malfoy drew back, and had the cheek to look confused. It was obviously an act, Harry thought. Though he did wonder, for a second, what she'd been about to say to him before Ginny spoke. Something insulting, no doubt. It always was.

Malfoy looked at Harry. She looked at Ron. She looked at Ginny, for a good deal longer than she'd looked at either of the boys, and with something in her face that Harry had no name for. Then she folded her arms and huffed.

'Not as surprised as I am to see you in a shop, Weasley,' she retorted. 'I suppose your parents will go hungry for a month to pay for that lot.'

Ron went as red as Ginny. He dumped his books in the cauldron and started for Malfoy, and Harry and Hermione got him by the back of the jacket.

'Ron!' Mr Weasley was struggling towards them with Fred and George. 'What are you doing? It's mad in here, let's go outside.'

'Well, well, well. Arthur Weasley.'

It was Mr Malfoy. He stood with a hand on Dracina's shoulder, sneering in precisely the way his daughter sneered.

'Lucius,' said Mr Weasley, with a cold nod.

'Busy time at the Ministry, I hear,' said Mr Malfoy. 'All those raids... I do hope they're paying you overtime?'

He reached into Ginny's cauldron and drew out, from among the glossy new Lockharts, a very old and very battered copy of A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration.

'Evidently not,' he said. 'Dear me. What's the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizards, if they don't even pay you well for it?'

Mr Weasley went a darker red than either of his children.

'We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizards, Malfoy,' he said.

'Clearly,' said Mr Malfoy, and his pale eyes slid to Mr and Mrs Granger, who were watching with some alarm. 'The company you keep, Weasley... and I thought your family could sink no lower...'

There was a clang as Ginny's cauldron went over. Mr Weasley had thrown himself at Mr Malfoy and sent him backwards into a bookcase. A dozen heavy spellbooks came thundering down on everybody's heads. Somebody, Fred or George, yelled, 'Get him, Dad!' Mrs Weasley was shrieking, 'No, Arthur, no!' The crowd went backwards in a stampede and brought down more shelves. 'Gentlemen, please... please!' cried the assistant, and over all of it a voice bellowed, 'Break it up, there, gents, break it up...'

While the two fathers went at it on the floor, Harry saw that Dracina had moved. She'd edged round the fight and up to Ginny, and she was going through Ginny's spilled books with the toe of her shoe.

'Look at all this low-class, second-hand rubbish. Potter will never take a little girl like YOU seriously.'

She picked one up, looked at the cover, and dropped it on the floor in front of Ginny. Then another. She stood over her and laughed, and said things about the books and about Ginny and about her clothes that Harry only half heard over the din, and she didn't stop.

Ginny had had enough. She snatched the stack of brand-new books out of the bag on Malfoy's shoulder and threw them at her, one after another, aiming for the head, and screaming names at her that Harry hadn't thought an eleven-year-old would know. Harry tried to get to them. He was worried, more worried than he could account for, both at the way Malfoy was bullying a girl a year younger and a head shorter, and at how fast it was turning into something worse. But every time he moved, Mr Weasley and Mr Malfoy rolled across his path in a tangle of robes and Lockharts, and the crowd shoved him back.

Then Hagrid was wading through the sea of books like a man through surf, and in one movement he'd got Mr Weasley by one collar and Mr Malfoy by the other and pulled them apart.

Mr Weasley had a cut lip. Mr Malfoy had been caught in the eye by an Encyclopaedia of Toadstools, and he was still holding Ginny's old Transfiguration book. He thrust it at her, with his eyes glittering.

'Here, girl. Take your book. It's the best your father can give you.'

Ginny took it. And Dracina, beside her, knocked it straight out of her hands on to the floor.

Ginny slapped Malfoy's own book out of her grip and on to the floor beside it.

'Pick it up, Little Weasel.'

Ginny's face crumpled. She started to cry, and it looked, for one second, as though the whole thing was going to start again from the beginning. But Lucius Malfoy had evidently decided to be dignified.

'Dracina, pick up the book for her. We're dignified purebloods. Unlike some wizards. So we'll leave peacefully.'

Dracina crouched. There were three or four books in a heap at her feet now, Ginny's and hers, old and new, and a small black one Harry hadn't noticed before, lying half under the others. She gathered them up in a sweep, pressed one into Ginny's hands without looking at it, and stuffed the rest into her own bag.

Mr Malfoy turned, and swept out, with a hand on his daughter's shoulder.

Dracina went with him. But on the way to the door she looked back, once, and the look was for Harry. Then she lifted her nose at Hermione, who met it with a stare that could have stripped varnish. And then, to Ginny, with her lip drawn back, she made a sound Harry had never heard a human being make, a long, low hiss, like a snake that has found something in its nest.

Harry had no idea what any of that meant. Hermione, it seemed, did, because she took hold of his arm again and didn't let go until they were in the street.

The door banged behind the Malfoys, and only then did Harry realise that he'd never got to ask her about Dobby. Then he thought about it, and decided it didn't matter, because he'd never have got anything out of her but spite and lies anyway. He only had to look at Ginny, with her face in her hands and her books all over the floor. Why did Malfoy have to be so cruel to other girls? And to him?

'Yeh should've ignored him, Arthur,' said Hagrid, very nearly lifting Mr Weasley off the ground as he straightened his robes for him. 'Rotten ter the core, the whole family, everyone knows that. No Malfoy's worth listenin' ter. Bad blood, that's what it is. Come on, now. Let's get outta here.'

The assistant looked as though he'd have liked to stop them leaving, but he barely came up to Hagrid's waist and thought better of it.

They hurried up the street, with the Grangers shaking and Mrs Weasley beside herself.

'A fine example to set your children... brawling in public... what Gilderoy Lockhart must have thought...'

'Yeah, and I would've chinned him if Hagrid didn't stop us,' said Arthur.

Harry looked at him, and understood just how much of Ron had come from his dad. That was a Ron thing to say, down to the last word.

'He was pleased,' said Fred. 'Didn't you hear him as we were leaving? He was asking that bloke from the Daily Prophet if he could work the fight into his report. Said it was all publicity.'

But it was a quiet, subdued party that made its way back to the fireside in the Leaky Cauldron, where Harry, the Weasleys and all their shopping would go home to the Burrow by Floo powder. They said goodbye to the Grangers, who were going out through the pub into the Muggle street on the other side. Mr Weasley started to ask them how bus stops worked, and stopped very quickly at the look on his wife's face.

Harry took off his glasses and put them safely in his pocket before he helped himself to Floo powder.

It definitely wasn't his favourite way to travel.