Freshly Caught

Harry barely grinned once the next day, and the day started going wrong at breakfast.

The four long tables were loaded with tureens of porridge and plates of kippers and mountains of toast under an enchanted ceiling that had chosen, for the first morning of term, a dull and cloudy grey. Harry and Ron sat down at the Gryffindor table beside Hermione, who had Voyages with Vampires propped open against the milk jug. There was a stiffness in the way she said 'Morning' to Ron that told Harry she hadn't quite finished disapproving of how they'd arrived. Harry, on the other hand, she was delighted to see, and she'd got something to tell him.

'Harry, did you know there are clans? Of vampires. Thirteen of them. It's all in here. There's the Ventrue, they're the ones who think they're royalty, and there was one of them called Angelus, from the Aurelian bloodline, who went right across Europe in the seventeen hundreds, and the things he did, Harry, in Romania, and then in London, there was a whole convent in-'

'Hermione, I'm eating,' said Ron.

'And there's one called William the Bloody, who was made in London, and they called him that because of the poetry, apparently, not the... well. And Dracula's real. He's actually real, he's in chapter nine, and there's a family who've been hunting him for about four hundred years, the Belmonts, they've got a whip, a whip, Harry, and every hundred years or so he comes back and one of them has to go up the mountain and...'

She went on. Each fact was worse than the last, and she told all of them with the shining, bright-eyed enthusiasm of someone describing a particularly good day out. She wouldn't let Ron get a word in. Harry found it very slightly disturbing, and had nowhere to put his eyes, and was never so glad to see Neville Longbottom as when Neville sat down opposite with a cheerful, 'Morning, all.'

'Post'll be here in a minute,' Neville added. 'I think Gran's sending on a few things I forgot.'

Harry had only just started his porridge when there was a rush of wings overhead and a hundred or so owls came pouring in through the high windows, circling the Hall and dropping letters and packages into the crowd. A big lumpy parcel bounced off Neville's head, and a second later something large and grey came down in Hermione's milk jug and showered all four of them with milk and feathers.

'Errol!' said Ron, and pulled the bedraggled owl out by the feet.

Errol flopped on to the table, unconscious, with his legs in the air and a damp red envelope in his beak.

'Oh, no...' Ron gasped.

'It's all right, he's still alive,' said Hermione, prodding Errol gently with a fingertip.

'It's not that. It's that.'

Ron was pointing at the red envelope. It looked ordinary enough to Harry, but Ron and Neville were both staring at it as though it might go off.

'What's the matter?' said Harry.

'She's... she's sent me a Howler,' said Ron faintly.

'You'd better open it, Ron,' Neville whispered. 'It'll be worse if you don't. My Gran sent me one once and I ignored it, and...' He swallowed. 'It was horrible.'

Harry looked from their stricken faces to the envelope.

'What's a Howler?'

But Ron's whole attention was on the letter, which had started to smoke at the corners.

'Open it,' Neville urged. 'It'll all be over in a few minutes...'

Ron put out a shaking hand, eased the envelope out of Errol's beak, and slit it open. Neville stuffed his fingers in his ears, and a split second later Harry knew why. For a moment he thought the thing had exploded. A roar of sound filled the enormous Hall and shook dust out of the rafters.

'... STEALING THE CAR, I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY'D EXPELLED YOU, YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU, I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH WHEN WE SAW IT HAD GONE...'

Mrs Weasley's voice, a hundred times louder than it had ever been in the kitchen at the Burrow, rattled the plates and spoons on the table and came booming back off the stone walls. Heads were turning all over the Hall to see who'd got the Howler, and Ron slid so far down in his chair that only his crimson forehead showed above the table.

'... LETTER FROM DUMBLEDORE LAST NIGHT, I THOUGHT YOUR FATHER WOULD DIE OF SHAME, WE DIDN'T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU AND HARRY COULD BOTH HAVE DIED...'

Harry had been wondering when his name was going to come up. He tried very hard to look like somebody who couldn't hear a voice that was making his eardrums throb.

'... ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED, YOUR FATHER'S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, IT'S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT AND IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE'LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME.'

A ringing silence fell. The red envelope, which had slipped out of Ron's fingers, burst into flame and curled up into ash. Harry and Ron sat as though a wave had just gone over them. A few people laughed, and gradually the talk came back.

Hermione shut Voyages with Vampires and looked down at the top of Ron's head.

'Well, I don't know what you expected, Ron, but you...'

'Don't tell me I deserved it,' snapped Ron.

Harry pushed his porridge away. His insides were burning with guilt. Mr Weasley was facing an inquiry. After everything the pair of them had done for him over the summer...

He had no time to dwell on it, because Professor McGonagall was moving down the Gryffindor table handing out timetables, and Harry took his and saw that they had double Herbology with the Hufflepuffs first. He was reading down the rest of the day when a head of silver-blonde hair rose into view over the top of the parchment.

It was Dracina Malfoy. Harry set his teeth to keep the anger where it was.

Crabbe and Goyle weren't with her, which was unusual. Harry had noticed that the two of them tended to make themselves scarce whenever Neville was about, and had done ever since the Hufflepuff match, when Neville had got the better of both of them with Malfoy screaming for help in the background. Malfoy was looking at Harry. She was looking at him very hard indeed, the way she had in Flourish and Blotts, as though there were something on the tip of her tongue.

'What?' asked Harry.

'Nothing!' Dracina said.

'Brilliant. If you have nothing to say, jog on, Malfoy.'

She plainly did have something to say. Her mouth had opened And then Ginny arrived.

Ginny had come down the table to speak to Ron. That was what she said, at any rate, in a very small voice, standing much closer to Harry's end of the bench than she needed to, with her eyes going to Harry and away again, and she hadn't seen Malfoy at all. Malfoy saw her, though. Harry watched the colour come up into Malfoy's face like a tide.

'Maybe I don't, Potter! You idiot! Enjoy your girlfriend!'

And she stamped off down the Hall.

Harry stared after her. Then, because the whole of the Gryffindor table seemed to have heard, he shouted, 'She's not my bloody girlfriend! She's Ron's sister, and that'd be weird!'

Malfoy stopped, and turned, and shouted straight back up the length of the Hall.

'Well, no witch of a proper noble family would want to be with someone as foul and idiotic as Harry Potter anyway!'

Then she stamped on to where Crabbe and Goyle had been loitering by the doors, and started shouting at them instead, and poking them, and hitting them on the arms, and both of them took it, both of them kept casting wary looks down the Hall at Neville, who was finishing his porridge and had no idea he was being looked at. Malfoy followed their eyes, and laughed at them, cruelly, and snapped her fingers for them to go. Then she looked back at Harry. Once more. He glared at her. And for a second, before she caught herself, she went pink, and her face did something that wasn't a sneer, wasn't a glare, and Harry didn't know what it was. Then she seemed to remember where she was, and huffed, and went.

'Bloody Malfoy,' Harry growled, and put the last spoonful of his cereal in his mouth. It looked like Coco Pops.

, but at Hogwarts the pieces leaked actual melted chocolate when you bit them.

He noticed, as he swallowed, that Hermione had moved along the bench until she was pressed against his side. He didn't notice that Ginny, who was talking to Ron with her back to him, had gone quiet and sad about the shoulders at being told she wasn't his girlfriend, as though she'd hoped, for a second, to be allowed to be.

Harry, Ron and Hermione left the castle together, crossed the vegetable patch and made for the greenhouses. The Howler had done one good thing: Hermione seemed to feel they'd been punished enough now, and had gone back to being perfectly friendly. The rest of the class were waiting outside Greenhouse Three when they got there, and Professor Sprout came striding across the lawn to meet them a moment later, with Gilderoy Lockhart beside her.

Her arms were full of bandages, and Harry, with another twinge, saw the Whomping Willow in the distance with several of its branches in slings.

Professor Sprout was a squat little witch with a patched hat on her flyaway hair, a good deal of earth on her robes, and fingernails that would have made Aunt Petunia faint. Gilderoy Lockhart was immaculate in sweeping turquoise, with a turquoise hat trimmed in gold set just so on his shining hair.

'Oh, hello there!' Lockhart called, beaming round at them all. 'Just been showing Professor Sprout the right way to doctor a Whomping Willow! But I don't want you running away with the idea that I'm better at Herbology than she is! I just happen to have met several of these exotic plants on my travels...'

'Of course you were,' said Harry.

Lockhart didn't appear to hear him. Lockhart, Harry was coming to understand, didn't appear to hear anything that wasn't about Lockhart.

'Greenhouse Three today, chaps!' said Professor Sprout, who looked thoroughly disgruntled and not at all her usual cheerful self.

A murmur went through the class. They'd only ever worked in Greenhouse One. Greenhouse Three had the interesting plants in it, and the dangerous ones.

Professor Sprout took a large key from her belt and unlocked the door, and Harry caught a breath of damp earth and fertiliser, and under it the heavy scent of some enormous umbrella-sized flowers hanging from the roof. He was about to follow Ron and Hermione inside when Lockhart's hand shot out and caught him.

'Harry! I've been wanting a word. You don't mind if he's a couple of minutes late, do you, Professor Sprout?'

Professor Sprout's scowl said that she minded a good deal, but Lockhart said, 'That's the ticket,' and shut the greenhouse door in her face.

'Harry,' said Lockhart, shaking his head, with every one of his big white teeth catching the sun. 'Harry, Harry, Harry.'

'That's my name, all right,' Harry said dryly. He wanted very much to be somewhere else.

'When I heard... well, of course, it was all my fault. Could have kicked myself.'

Harry hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about, and was about to say so when Lockhart swept on.

'Don't know when I've been more shocked. Flying a car to Hogwarts! Well, of course, I knew at once why you'd done it.'

'Of course you do,' Harry said, knowing he didn't.

'Stood out a mile. Harry, Harry, Harry.'

It was remarkable, Harry thought, how he could show all those teeth even with his mouth shut.

'Gave you a taste for publicity, didn't I?' said Lockhart. 'Gave you the bug. You got on to the front page of the paper with me, and you couldn't wait to do it again.'

'Oh, no, Professor, see...'

'Harry, Harry, Harry,' said Lockhart, and gripped his shoulder. 'I understand. Natural to want a bit more once you've had that first taste. And I blame myself for giving you that, because it was bound to go to your head.'

'No, it hasn't, sir,' Harry refuted.

'Haha. But see here, young man, you can't start flying cars to try and get yourself noticed. Just calm down, all right? Plenty of time for all that when you're older. Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking! "It's all right for him, he's an internationally famous wizard already!" But when I was twelve, I was just as much of a nobody as you are now. In fact, I'd say I was even more of a nobody! I mean, a few people have heard of you, haven't they? All that business with He Who Must Not Be Named!'

'I'm sure you're an expert, sir.'

Lockhart's eyes went to the scar on Harry's forehead.

'I know, I know, it's not quite as good as winning Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award five times in a row, as I have.'

'I'm sure you have, sir,' Harry nodded. It explained a good deal, he thought, about the lavender.

'You've got a bright future in front of you, my boy. And I'll always be available for advice. Read my work and you'll see the adventures I've had.'

'Sure,' Harry said, in a tone that meant he wouldn't, ever.

'Haha. You've a keen sense of humour, my boy. I love it. But I must be off.'

And Lockhart sauntered away across the lawn, in the way that people who smell of lavender tend to saunter, and Harry went into the greenhouse and shut the door on him.

Professor Sprout was standing behind a trestle bench in the middle of the greenhouse, and on the bench lay twenty or so pairs of earmuffs in different colours. When Harry had taken his place between Ron and Hermione, she said, 'We'll be repotting Mandrakes today. Now. Who can tell me the properties of the Mandrake?'

Nobody was surprised when Hermione's hand went up first.

'Mandrake, or Mandragora, is a powerful restorative,' said Hermione, sounding, as usual, as though she'd eaten the textbook. 'It's used to return people who've been transfigured or cursed to their original state.'

'Excellent. Ten points to Gryffindor,' said Professor Sprout. 'The Mandrake forms an essential part of most antidotes. It's also, however, dangerous. Who can tell me why?'

Hermione's hand went up so fast it nearly took Harry's glasses with it.

'The cry of the Mandrake is fatal to anyone who hears it,' she said promptly.

'Lovely,' murmured Harry dryly. He was still thinking about what a dandy Lockhart was.

'Precisely. Take another ten points,' said Professor Sprout. 'Now, the Mandrakes we have here are still very young.'

She pointed at a row of deep trays, and everybody shuffled forward for a look. A hundred or so small tufty plants, purplish green, were growing in rows. They looked perfectly ordinary to Harry, who had no idea what Hermione meant by the cry of a plant.

'Everyone take a pair of earmuffs,' said Professor Sprout.

There was a scramble for any pair that wasn't pink and fluffy.

'When I tell you to put them on, make sure your ears are completely covered,' said Professor Sprout. 'When it's safe to take them off, I'll give you the thumbs up. Right. Earmuffs on.'

Harry snapped his over his ears. The world went silent. Professor Sprout put a pink fluffy pair over her own ears, rolled up her sleeves, took a firm hold of one of the tufty plants, and pulled.

Harry gasped, and nobody heard him.

Instead of roots, a small, muddy, extremely ugly baby came up out of the earth. The leaves were growing straight out of its head. Its skin was pale green and mottled, and it was quite plainly screaming its lungs out. Professor Sprout took a big pot from under the bench and plunged the Mandrake into it, and buried it in dark compost until only the leaves showed. Then she dusted her hands, gave them all the thumbs up, and took her earmuffs off.

'As our Mandrakes are only seedlings, their cries won't kill yet,' she said, as calmly as if she'd just watered a begonia. 'However, they'll knock you out for several hours, and as I'm sure none of you want to miss your first day back, make sure your earmuffs are securely in place while you work. I'll attract your attention when it's time to pack up. Four to a tray. There's a large supply of pots here. Compost in the sacks over there. And be careful of the Venomous Tentacula, it's teething.'

She gave a sharp slap to a spiky dark-red plant as she said it, and it drew in a set of long feelers that had been inching over her shoulder.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were joined at their tray by a curly-haired Hufflepuff that Harry knew by sight and had never spoken to.

'Justin Finch-Fletchley,' he said brightly, shaking Harry's hand. 'Know who you are, of course, the famous Harry Potter, and you're Hermione Granger, always top in everything...' Hermione beamed and had her hand shaken too. '... and Ron Weasley. Wasn't that your flying car?'

Ron didn't smile. The Howler was still sitting on him.

'That Lockhart's something, isn't he?' said Justin happily, as they started filling their pots with dragon-dung compost. 'Awfully brave chap. Have you read his books? I'd have died of fright if I'd been cornered in a telephone box by a werewolf, but he stayed cool and, zap, just fantastic. My name was down for Eton, you know.'

He said it as though it were the most impressive thing anybody had ever said.

'I can tell,' Harry added.

Ron looked at Harry with his eyebrows up, waiting to be told what an Eton was.

'Oh, I can't tell you how glad I am I came here instead. Of course, Mother was slightly disappointed, but since I made her read Lockhart's books I think she's begun to see how useful it'll be to have a fully trained wizard in the family.'

'It'd be more useful if we could use our ruddy spells outside of Hogwarts,' Harry replied ruefully, and thought of Dobby, and the Dursleys, and a frying pan.

Justin laughed, in a way that reminded Harry far too much of Lockhart, and then they all put their earmuffs back on and went back to potting a tray of potentially lethal screaming vegetables that somebody had thought it sensible to hand to a roomful of twelve-year-olds. Wizards, Harry thought, were still mental. Beside him Ron winced, with the earmuffs on, at a noise he shouldn't have been able to hear.

There wasn't much chance to talk after that. Professor Sprout had made it look easy, and it wasn't. The Mandrakes didn't want to come out of the earth, and didn't want to go back into it either, and they squirmed and kicked and flailed their sharp little fists and gnashed their teeth, and Harry spent ten whole minutes trying to force one particularly fat one into a pot. By the end of the lesson he was sweating, aching, and covered in earth, like everybody else, and they trudged back up to the castle for a wash before the Gryffindors hurried off to Transfiguration.

Professor McGonagall's lessons were always hard work, and today was worse than most. Everything Harry had learned last year seemed to have run out of his head over the summer. He was supposed to be turning a beetle into a button.

'It's the same principle as the match,' said Professor McGonagall, pacing between the desks. 'Intent, Potter. The beetle must understand that you mean it. I once turned a vault's worth of gold into beetles, a very long time ago, in a place I shan't name, and the gold understood me perfectly, which is more than can be said for your beetle.'

'A vault of gold, Professor?' said Seamus. 'Why?'

'Because a gentleman I was working alongside at the time needed a great deal of gold to go missing in a hurry, and he had a way of asking that one found hard to refuse.' Something that might have been fondness went across her face and was gone. 'A Muggle. Scottish. He had a desk at a very dull-sounding office near the river, though he was seldom at it. I haven't heard from him in a good many years. I expect he's retired somewhere warm, and I expect he's lying about it. Never mind him. Wrist, Potter.'

Harry's wrist did its best. All he managed was to give his beetle a great deal of exercise, scuttling about the desk ahead of his wand.

Ron was having a far worse time of it. He'd patched his wand with borrowed Spellotape, but it seemed to be damaged beyond repair; it crackled and sparked at odd moments, and every time he tried to transfigure his beetle it swallowed him in a cloud of thick grey smoke that smelled of rotten eggs. Unable to see what he was doing, Ron put his elbow on his beetle and had to ask for a new one, and Professor McGonagall wasn't pleased.

Harry was relieved to hear the bell. His brain felt like a sponge that had been wrung out. Everyone filed out except him and Ron, who was whacking his wand on the desk.

'Stupid... useless... thing...'

'Write home for another one,' Harry suggested, as the wand let off a volley of bangs like a jumping jack.

'Oh yeah, and get another Howler back,' said Ron, and stuffed the wand, now hissing, into his bag.

Harry did his best to cheer him up on the way down.

'Look, it still sparks. That's something. Most of a spell's the sparks.'

'Is it?'

'I don't know. Probably.'

'It's your own fault your wand got snapped,' said Hermione, catching them up, which didn't help.

Nor did lunch, where Hermione showed them the handful of perfect coat buttons she'd made in Transfiguration.

'What've we got this afternoon?' said Harry, changing the subject as fast as he could.

'Defence Against the Dark Arts,' said Hermione at once. 'And we're sharing it with the Slytherins.'

'Oh, God. That means I have to be around Malfoy,' Harry said, in horror.

'I'm sure you drew little love hearts around Lockhart's lessons,' Ron teased Hermione, and ducked the bread roll.

They finished lunch and went out into the overcast courtyard. Hermione sat down on a step and put her nose back into Voyages with Vampires, somewhere round the bit about the Nosferatu, Harry supposed, which she'd described to him at breakfast in rather more detail than he'd wanted with a kipper in front of him. He and Ron stood talking Quidditch for a few minutes before Harry became aware that he was being watched.

He looked up, and found the very small mousy-haired boy from the Sorting staring at him as though he'd been turned to stone. He had what looked like an ordinary Muggle camera clutched in both hands, and the moment Harry looked at him he went bright red.

'All right, Harry? I'm... I'm Colin Creevey,' he said breathlessly, taking a careful step forward. 'I'm in Gryffindor too. D'you think... would it be all right if... can I have a picture?' He lifted the camera, hopefully.

'A picture?' Harry repeated blankly.

'So I can prove I've met you,' said Colin eagerly, edging nearer. 'I know all about you. Everyone's told me. About how you survived when You Know Who tried to kill you, and how he disappeared and everything, and how you've still got a lightning scar on your forehead...' His eyes went over Harry's hairline like a searchlight. '... and a boy in my dormitory said if I develop the film in the right potion, the pictures'll move.' He took a great shuddering breath. 'It's brilliant here, isn't it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter. My dad's a milkman, he couldn't believe it either. So I'm taking loads of pictures to send home to him. And it'd be really good if I had one of you...' He looked up at Harry imploringly. '... maybe your friend could take it, and I could stand next to you? And then, could you sign it?'

Harry would have gone to his grave before admitting that he was flattered, and he was.

'Signed photos? You're giving out signed photos, Potter?'

Loud, scathing, and carrying to every corner, Dracina Malfoy's voice rang round the courtyard. She'd stopped right behind Colin, with Crabbe and Goyle planted on either side of her like a pair of gateposts.

'Everyone queue up!' Malfoy roared to the crowd. 'Harry Potter's giving out signed photos!'

'You want one?' said Harry dryly.

Dracina snorted in disgust, and something in the snort got under Harry's skin.

'No, I'm not, actually. Shut up, Malfoy.'

'You're just jealous,' piped up Colin, the whole of whom was about as thick as one of Crabbe's necks.

'Jealous?' said Malfoy. She didn't need to shout any more; half the courtyard was listening. 'Of what? I don't want a foul scar right across my head, thanks. I don't think getting your head cut open makes you that special, myself.'

'Eat slugs, Malfoy,' said Ron angrily.

Crabbe stopped laughing and began to rub his conker-sized knuckles together.

'Be careful, Weasley,' sneered Malfoy. 'You remember what happened the last time you crossed me!'

Ron's hand went to his ear.

'You don't want to start any trouble, or your mummy'll have to come and take you away from school.' She put on a high, mocking voice. 'If you put another toe out of line...'

A knot of Slytherin fifth-years nearby laughed loudly.

'Seeing as Weasley is your friend, and I'm NOT, not that I WANT to be friends with you, Weasley would like a signed photo, Potter,' smirked Malfoy. 'It'd be worth more than his family's whole house.'

Ron whipped out his Spellotaped wand, but Hermione shut Voyages with Vampires with a snap and whispered, 'Look out!'

'What's all this, what's all this?'

Gilderoy Lockhart was striding towards them with his turquoise robes billowing. 'Who's giving out signed photos?'

Harry started to speak, and was cut short, because Lockhart had flung an arm round his shoulders and boomed, 'Shouldn't have asked! We meet again, Harry!'

'Unfortunately,' said Harry.

Why could the man never take a hint? Harry had never in his life tried so hard not to be liked by somebody, and it was having no effect whatever Harry didn't like Men like Lockhart did. Pinned to Lockhart's side and burning with humiliation, he watched Malfoy melt back into the crowd with that smug grin on her face, that bloody, infuriating grin, and swore to himself that he'd wipe it off her one day if it was the last thing he did.

'Come on then, Mr Creevey,' said Lockhart, beaming at Colin. 'A double portrait, can't say fairer than that, and we'll both sign it for you.'

Colin fumbled with his camera and took the picture as the bell rang behind them for afternoon lessons.

'Off you go, move along there,' Lockhart called to the crowd, and he set off for the castle with Harry, who was wishing he knew a good Vanishing Spell, still clamped under his arm.

'A word to the wise, Harry,' said Lockhart, fatherly, as they went in by a side door. 'I covered up for you back there with young Creevey. If he was photographing me too, your schoolfellows won't think you're setting yourself up so much...'

'I... I didn't even want my bloomin' photo taken,' Harry said irritably.

Lockhart, deaf to it, swept him down a corridor full of staring students and up a staircase.

'Let me just say that handing out signed pictures at this stage of your career isn't sensible. Looks a tad big-headed, Harry.'

'Not that you'd know anything of that, sir,' Harry said. He'd found that, with Lockhart, he was incapable of being anything less dry than a desert.

They'd reached Lockhart's classroom, and Lockhart let him go at last. Harry yanked his robes straight and went for a seat at the very back, where he set about stacking all seven of Lockhart's books in a wall in front of him, so that he wouldn't have to look at the real thing over the top.

The rest of the class came clattering in, and Ron and Hermione sat down on either side of him.

'You could've fried an egg on your face,' said Ron. 'You'd better hope Creevey doesn't meet Ginny, they'll be starting a Harry Potter fan club.'

Dracina had just come through the door. Ron's words reached her, and she made a noise that Harry could only describe as a hiss and a spit put together.

'Idiot Potter,' she said, and sat down as far from them as the room allowed, with a huff that could be heard from the back.

'You shut your bloody mouth up,' Harry snapped at Ron. The last thing on earth he needed was for Lockhart to hear the words Harry Potter fan club.

When everyone was seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly, and the room went quiet. He leaned forward, picked up Neville's copy of Travels with Trolls, and held it up so that the class could see his own portrait winking on the cover.

'Me,' he said, pointing at it and winking too. 'Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five times winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award. But I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!'

He waited for the laugh. A few people smiled, weakly.

'I see you've all bought a complete set of my books. Well done. I thought we'd start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about. Just to check how well you've read them, how much you've taken in...'

He handed out the papers, went back to the front, and said, 'You have thirty minutes. Start... now!'

Harry looked down at his paper.

It went on like that for three sides, all the way down to:

Half an hour later Lockhart collected the papers and rifled through them in front of the class.

'Tut, tut. Hardly any of you remembered that my favourite colour is lilac. I say so in Year with the Yeti. And a few of you need to read Wanderings with Werewolves more carefully. I clearly state in chapter twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples. Though I wouldn't say no to a large bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky!'

He gave them another roguish wink. Ron was staring at him with open disbelief. In the front row, Seamus and Dean were shaking with laughter they didn't dare let out. At least, Harry thought, everybody in the room apart from Lockhart could see he was a berk.

Everybody apart from Lockhart and Hermione. Hermione was listening with her hands clasped and her whole face lit up, and she jumped when he said her name.

'... but Miss Hermione Granger knew my secret ambition is to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair-care potions. Good girl! In fact...' He turned her paper over. 'Full marks! Where is Miss Hermione Granger?'

Hermione raised a trembling hand.

'Excellent!' beamed Lockhart. 'Quite excellent! Take ten points for Gryffindor! And so, to business...'

He bent down behind his desk and lifted a large covered cage on to it.

'Now. Be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm.'

In spite of himself, Harry leaned round his wall of books for a look. Lockhart laid a hand on the cover. Dean and Seamus had stopped laughing. Neville was cowering in his front-row seat.

'I must ask you not to scream,' said Lockhart, in a low voice. 'It might provoke them.'

The whole class held its breath. Lockhart whipped off the cover.

'Yes,' he said dramatically. 'Freshly caught Cornish pixies.'

Seamus Finnigan couldn't hold it. He let out a snort of laughter that even Lockhart couldn't have mistaken for a scream of terror.

'Yes?' Lockhart smiled at him.

'Well, they're not... they're not very... dangerous, are they?' Seamus choked.

'Don't be so sure!' said Lockhart, wagging a finger at him in a way that made Harry want to bite it. 'Devilish tricky little blighters they can be!'

The pixies were electric blue and about eight inches tall, with pointed faces and voices so shrill that it was like listening to a cage full of budgies having a row. The moment the cover came off they'd started jabbering and rocketing about, rattling the bars and pulling faces at whoever was nearest.

'Right then,' Lockhart said loudly. 'Let's see what you make of them!'

And he opened the cage.

It was pandemonium. The pixies went off in every direction like fireworks. Two of them seized Neville by the ears and lifted him clean into the air. Several shot straight through the window and showered the back row with glass. The rest set about wrecking the classroom more thoroughly than a rhinoceros could have. They snatched up ink bottles and sprayed the class with them. They shredded books and parchment, tore pictures off the walls, tipped over the bin, grabbed bags and threw them out through the broken window, and inside two minutes half the class was under the desks and Neville was swinging from the candelabra in the ceiling.

'Come on now, round them up, round them up, they're only pixies...'

Across the room, Malfoy had four of them on her. They were in her hair, and pulling it, and one had her by the ear, and she'd lost her wand under a desk somewhere, and for all her shrieking and flailing she couldn't shake them.

'Potter, do something!' she screamed at him.

Harry had no idea why she'd picked him. Of all the people in the room. But against every bit of his better judgement, he found he was already on his feet with a copy of Gadding with Ghouls in his hand, and he waded in and swung it, and swung it again, and the pixies went off her in a cloud of blue sparks and bad language, and he beat the last one out of her hair with the spine of the book while she sat perfectly still with her hands over her face.

He didn't see what her face did when she took her hands away. He didn't see that she looked at him, in that moment, as though he were the most heroic thing she'd ever laid eyes on, or that she turned straight round in her seat afterwards and pulled a face at Hermione that Hermione returned with interest. He didn't see that her eyes stayed on him for the whole of the rest of the lesson. He'd already turned away.

'You're welcome,' Harry said irritably, when he'd got his breath back and gone over to address her.

Dracina put her nose in the air and snorted. She was still, evidently, cross with him about breakfast, and he could see she'd rather have swallowed a pixie than thank him, or give him the satisfaction of being thanked.

Lockhart, meanwhile, had rolled up his sleeves, brandished his wand, and bellowed, 'Peskipiksi Pesternomi!'

It did nothing whatever. One of the pixies took the wand off him and threw it out of the window after the bags. Lockhart gulped and dived under his own desk, and was missed by inches as Neville came down a second later with the candelabra on top of him.

The bell rang. There was a stampede for the door. In the relative quiet that followed, Lockhart straightened up, saw Harry, Ron and Hermione almost at the exit, and said, 'Well, I'll ask you three to just nip the rest of them back into their cage.'

And he swept past them and shut the door smartly behind him.

'Thanks, Professor,' Harry said to the door, with feeling.

'Can you believe him?' roared Ron, as one of the remaining pixies bit him painfully on the ear.

'He just wants to give us some hands-on experience,' said Hermione, stopping two pixies dead with a neat Freezing Charm and stuffing them back in the cage.

'Hands on?' said Harry, who was trying to grab one that kept dancing just out of reach with its tongue out. He got it, and waved it at Hermione. 'Mission accomplished, Hermione, but look at the state of this classroom. He didn't have a clue what he was doing.'

'Rubbish,' said Hermione. 'You've read his books. Look at all those amazing things he's done...'

'He says he's done,' Ron muttered.

Harry nodded. He didn't look round at the far corner of the wrecked classroom, where Dracina Malfoy was still sitting, long after the bell, with a small black book open on the desk in front of her and a quill moving fast, writing down what she'd rather have died than say.