An Act of God

For a whole week after the final, Harry went about the castle with his feet barely touching the floor. The weather, too, seemed to be in a good mood. As June drew nearer, the sky stayed cloudless from dawn to dusk. The air grew heavy with the smell of cut grass. Out on the lake, which lay flat and glittering in the sun, the giant squid drifted along like an old dog asleep in a bath. Everybody wanted to be outside, sprawled on the lawns with a jug of iced pumpkin juice, or playing Gobstones in the shade of the beech trees.

Nobody could, because the exams were almost upon them. Instead of lounging by the lake, the whole school was shut up indoors with its books, trying to force facts into its head while warm, sweet-smelling breezes wandered in at every open window. Even Fred and George had been seen doing some work, with their O.W.L.s only weeks away. Percy’s N.E.W.T.s were only days away, and he had become almost impossible to live with.

He had decided that the Gryffindor common room was to be silent after seven o’clock. Every evening he patrolled it like a prison warden, with his Head Boy badge polished until it hurt to look at. He gave a second year a week’s detention for laughing. He confiscated Lee Jordan’s Exploding Snap cards along with three of Seamus’s Chocolate Frogs. When Fred let off a single, very small firework on the Tuesday, Percy turned such a dark shade of purple that Neville leant over to Hermione in a panic. ‘Can a person actually burst?’ he whispered.

‘He’s mental,’ said Harry, as Percy swept past their table for the fourth time in ten minutes, glaring at a first year who had dared to turn a page loudly. ‘He’s actually gone mental. Do you reckon he hears his own voice at night, telling him off for snoring?’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ said Ron. He lowered his voice, though not by much. ‘He’s got to get top marks, you see. He still wants to be Minister for Magic. I told you, remember? In Diagon Alley.’

‘I thought you were joking,’ said Harry.

‘I never joke about Percy. He’s had it planned since he was about six. He’s got a list. It’s in his trunk, I’ve seen it.’ Ron leant closer. ‘Some of it’s all right, to be fair. He reckons families like ours ought to get a bit of help. Money for books and robes, so nobody gets stuck with their brother’s old wand. He wants to stop the old families buying people jobs at the Ministry. Mum nearly cried when he told her that bit.’

Harry thought of the kitchen at the Burrow, with washing piled on every chair, and of Mr Weasley working late at a job the rest of the Ministry laughed at. He thought of Lucius Malfoy in Flourish and Blotts the summer before last, sneering at Ginny’s second-hand books.

‘That sounds good, actually,’ he said.

‘Yeah. It’s the rest of the list you want to worry about.’ Ron gave a little shudder. ‘Seizing assets from Dark Wizards, taking back the Bank from the Goblins, reforming the due process, tracking bloodlines. He calls it a fair and orderly society.’ He pulled a face. ‘Like I said, ideas that’d make Grindelwald tell him to steady on. I said that to his face once, and he didn’t talk to me for a week.’

Harry laughed, but the first half of the list stayed with him. For three years he had watched pure-bloods like Lucius Malfoy look down their noses at everybody else. He had heard Malfoy herself call Hermione a Mudblood more often than he could count, in the voice she might have used to remark on the weather. He had seen the Weasleys counting out Sickles for school books in the same summer that Mr Malfoy bought the whole Slytherin team new brooms. Wizarding Britain, he thought, could do with many changes.

‘You could do it, you know,’ said Ron, grinning. ‘Be Minister. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, Minister for Magic. They’d vote for you tomorrow.’

Harry didn’t smile. ‘If I ever had that sort of power,’ he said, in a perfectly flat voice, ‘I wouldn’t be a Minister.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘A Minister’s not what’s needed. Not to put things right.’

Ron laughed. It came out slightly too high, the laugh of somebody who very much hoped he was being told a joke. Harry looked down at his Potions notes and said nothing more about it. After a moment Ron went back to his star charts.

Harry couldn’t have explained what he meant quite yet, even to himself. It was only a feeling, half formed, somewhere at the back of his mind. At Christmas he had crouched behind a tree in the Three Broomsticks, listening to the Minister for Magic tell Madam Rosmerta and a table full of teachers how worried he was, without doing anything whatsoever about it. The grown-ups in charge had let a hundred dementors on to the Quidditch pitch in November. They had let Black into the castle twice. In Harry’s first year they had taken on a man with Voldemort on the back of his head to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts. Every time, they said how sorry they were and carried on exactly as before. It seemed to Harry that most witches and wizards would believe whatever they were told by the last person to tell them anything. Perhaps somebody ought to start telling them the right things, for their own good.

He shook his head and turned the page. For now, though, he had a Potions exam to worry about.

*

The only person in Gryffindor Tower more on edge than Percy was Hermione.

She had always worked hard, but now she seemed to be doing the work of three people. She was up before anybody else in the morning. She went to bed after everybody else at night. She ate her meals with a book propped against the milk jug and a quill in her free hand. When Ron asked her to pass the salt one morning, she passed him an inkpot without looking up. She had taken to muttering lists of times under her breath, too, and more than once Harry caught her glaring at the common room clock as though it had done something to offend her.

She had not forgotten the revision timetable she had made for Harry at Easter, either. Every evening at seven o’clock she appeared at his elbow, tapped the parchment and said, ‘Library,’ in a voice that allowed no argument. If he happened to be talking to somebody else, she would stand very close beside him, waiting, until they gave up and drifted away. When Parvati sat down next to Harry in the library one evening to ask about the Charms homework, Hermione found her a much better table on the other side of the room. She did it so quickly and so kindly that Parvati was halfway there before she realised she had been moved. When Hermione came back she grumbled about sparing Harry from a funny smell.

Ron had taken to helping Hermione, which surprised Harry a good deal. Ron had never helped anybody revise in his life, least of all himself. Now he carried her bag between lessons. He tested her on Arithmancy formulae he obviously didn’t understand, holding the book upside down until she turned it the right way up for him. When she fell asleep over her Ancient Runes, he slid the quill out of her fingers before she could blot the page. He sat there for twenty minutes afterwards without moving, so as not to wake her, turning slowly red whenever anybody looked his way. Once Harry glanced up to find Ron gazing across the table at her with a puzzled sort of frown, like somebody trying to remember how to spell a word he had always known. When he saw Harry watching, Ron jumped so violently that he knocked over the ink.

Harry thought it was decent of him. He supposed Ron was making up for the row about Scabbers.

*

There was one other thing spoiling Harry’s good mood, and that was the Invisibility Cloak.

On the Saturday after the final, the feud between Gryffindor and Slytherin boiled over one last time. Somebody let off a crate of Dungbombs outside the Slytherin common room. Somebody else filled every sock drawer in Gryffindor Tower with frogspawn. The upshot was that Filch was sent round every dormitory in the castle with a list of forbidden objects as long as his arm, under strict orders to confiscate the lot.

Fred and George came thundering up the boys’ staircase five minutes ahead of him.

‘Filch!’ Fred hissed through the door. ‘Coming up now, with a sack and a list! Hide anything you don’t want Snape to see!’

Harry’s stomach turned over. Ever since Malfoy had run to Snape with her story of a head floating in mid-air by the Shrieking Shack, Snape had been looking for whatever it was that had made the rest of Harry disappear. If Filch found the Cloak in Harry’s trunk, it would be on Snape’s desk within the hour. Harry would never see it again. He dragged it out from under his socks, stuffed it up his jumper and ran.

There was only one hiding place he could think of. Three minutes later he was standing in the empty corridor beside the one-eyed witch, panting, with the Cloak bundled under his arm. He tapped her hump, whispered the password and dropped the Cloak down the chute into the dark. When he got back to the Tower, Filch was tipping the contents of Ron’s trunk out on to the floor with a grunt of triumph. He confiscated a packet of Fizzing Whizzbees.

It had seemed a brilliant idea at the time. The next morning, however, on his way down to breakfast, Harry found Snape standing in that very corridor, prodding the witch’s hump with the end of his wand. After that Snape seemed to pass along it a dozen times a day, with a sudden passion for statues. Harry didn’t dare go near it.

*

Harry and Ron had long since given up asking Hermione how she managed to get to so many lessons at once. They couldn’t help themselves, though, when they saw the exam timetable she had written out. Monday alone looked like this:

Monday

9 o’clock, Arithmancy

9 o’clock, Transfiguration

Lunch

1 o’clock, Charms

1 o’clock, Ancient Runes

‘Hermione?’ Ron said cautiously, because these days she tended to go off like a firework at the slightest interruption. ‘Er-are you sure you’ve copied down these times right?’

‘What?’ snapped Hermione, snatching up the timetable to check it. ‘Yes, of course I have.’

‘Is there any point asking how you’re going to sit for two exams at once?’ said Harry.

‘No,’ said Hermione shortly. ‘Have either of you seen my copy of Numerology and Grammatica?’

‘Oh, yeah, I borrowed it for a bit of bedtime reading,’ said Ron, but very quietly.

Hermione began shoving piles of parchment about on the table, hunting for the book. At that moment there was a flutter at the window. Hedwig swooped in with a note held tightly in her beak.

‘It’s from Hagrid,’ said Harry, tearing it open. ‘Buckbeak’s appeal-it’s set for the sixth.’

‘That’s the day we finish our exams,’ said Hermione, still searching for her Arithmancy book.

‘And they’re coming up here to do it,’ said Harry, still reading. ‘Someone from the Ministry of Magic and-and an executioner.’

Hermione’s head jerked up.

‘They’re bringing the executioner to the appeal! But that sounds as though they’ve already decided!’

‘Yeah, it does,’ said Harry slowly.

‘They can’t!’ Ron howled. ‘I’ve spent ages reading up on stuff for him; they can’t just ignore it all!’

Harry had a horrible feeling, though, that Mr Malfoy had already made up the Committee’s mind for it.

He thought at once of Malfoy herself. He had been trying to get her on her own all week. Ever since the final, he had wanted to ask her in private what she had meant by it all: what she had meant on the castle steps, with blood on her sleeve, when she promised to put everything right, and what she had meant on the pitch. She seemed to be avoiding him. Whenever he came round a corner, she was just disappearing round the next one. If he caught her eye across the Great Hall, she looked away at once.

The Slytherins had been sneering at Gryffindor in a sour, spiteful sort of way ever since the final. Malfoy joined in when she had to, though her heart was plainly not in it. Once, when Flint did his impression of Wood sobbing into Harry’s shoulder, she laughed a second too late, as if her mind had been somewhere else entirely. Most of the time she was simply quiet. She sat at the far end of the Slytherin table with her head down, scribbling on scraps of parchment, or gazing out of the window towards the Forest. On the Thursday her mother’s owl, Ganymede, brought her a long, soft parcel wrapped in brown paper. She whisked it under the table on to her lap before anybody could see what was in it. A minute later she left the Hall with the parcel clutched to her chest.

Harry couldn’t understand it. Only the other week she had stood at the edge of the pitch, looking up at him with her face shining. Now she wouldn’t even meet his eye. He decided she must be sulking about something, though he had no idea what.

Worst of all, there was no chance of going down to see Hagrid. The strict new safety measures were still in force, nobody was allowed out after dark, and Harry’s Cloak lay at the bottom of a chute that Snape now guarded like a dragon on a heap of gold.

*

On the first morning of the exams, the Great Hall was quieter than Harry had ever known it. Nobody was talking much. Neville was reading his Transfiguration notes with his lips moving, spooning porridge vaguely in the direction of his mouth. Seamus sat with his eyes screwed shut, muttering every incantation he knew, over and over, in case one of them came up.

Hermione hadn’t touched her breakfast. She had three different timetables spread out round her plate, along with a list of what she called key formulae, and she kept looking from one to another, deeply suspicious of all three. There were dark smudges under her eyes. Her hair, which was bushy at the best of times, had reached new heights.

Harry glanced over at the Slytherin table. He didn’t mean anything by it. Malfoy was sitting at the end as usual, apart from the others, with a book open in front of her and a slice of toast going cold in her hand. She was reading so hard that she didn’t look up once.

When he turned back, Hermione was looking where he had looked.

Her face had gone tight and pale. One of her hands had crept up to her collar. It was the chain again, the one he had seen her worrying at on and off since the first morning of term. This time she had drawn a little of it out from the neck of her robes. Her fingers were twisting it round and round. She was staring at Malfoy with her lips moving silently, the way they did when she was working out a maths problem.

‘Hermione?’ said Harry.

She didn’t seem to hear. She had drawn out another inch of chain. Something small and golden glinted at the end of it, just under the edge of her collar.

‘Do you know,’ she said, in a strange, soft voice, still watching Malfoy, ‘it would be so easy. Nobody would ever know. Just like last time… I could-’

She stopped dead. With a sharp, angry little movement, she pushed the chain back down inside her robes and smoothed her collar over it.

‘Could what?’ said Harry.

‘Nothing.’ Hermione picked up her fork and stabbed a sausage with it, rather viciously. ‘It doesn’t matter. Eat your toast, Harry, you’ll need it.’

‘What is that thing, anyway?’

‘Since when do you notice what she wears?’ said Ron, with his mouth full. He went red at once. He obviously hadn’t meant to say it. ‘I mean... you never notice anything. You didn’t notice when Neville came down to breakfast with his jumper on inside out.’

‘It’s a present,’ said Hermione shortly. ‘From a friend of the family. Have either of you got a spare quill? I’ve worn mine down to the nib.’

Harry gave her his spare. As they got up to leave, he looked back at the Slytherin table, but Malfoy’s place was already empty.

It wasn’t the last time, either. Twice more that week Harry saw Hermione’s hand creep up to her collar while she glared across the Great Hall at Malfoy. Each time she snatched it away again, as if the chain had burnt her.

*

Exam week had begun, and an odd, breathless hush fell over the whole castle.

By lunchtime on Monday, the third years were trailing out of Transfiguration looking pale and wrung out, comparing notes, moaning about how hard it had been. One of the tasks had been to change a teapot into a tortoise. To everybody’s annoyance, Hermione kept worrying aloud that hers had come out looking rather more like a turtle. ‘The shell was all wrong,’ she fretted. ‘Much too flat. Tortoises have domed shells, everybody knows that. Professor McGonagall’s bound to notice.’ As far as the rest of them were concerned, this was the least of anybody’s problems.

‘Mine still had a spout for a tail, what a nightmare...’

‘Were the tortoises supposed to breathe steam?’

‘It still had a willow-patterned shell, d’you think that’ll count against me?’

Harry’s had been reasonably tortoise-shaped, apart from a handle on its back, which he hoped Professor McGonagall would take for an unusual sort of shell. He didn’t think about it for long, because Hermione was already explaining, to nobody in particular, what she had got wrong in the Arithmancy paper.

Ron stopped halfway down the marble staircase and stared at her.

‘When did you do Arithmancy?’

‘This morning.’

‘You were with us this morning. You were sitting right in front of me. You turned your teapot into a tortoise. I watched you do it.’

‘Yes, Ronald, I was there,’ said Hermione. ‘Now I’m here, and I’d like some lunch, if that’s all right with you.’ She swept on down the stairs. Over her shoulder she added, ‘Question seven was a trick. I knew it was a trick. I said so in the margin.’

Ron looked at Harry. Harry shrugged. He had given up long ago.

They had barely time to bolt a few potatoes before they had to hurry back upstairs for Charms. Professor Flitwick tested them on Cheering Charms, exactly as Hermione had said he would. Harry was so nervous that he slightly overdid his. Ron, who was partnering him, went off into fits of hysterical laughter and couldn’t stop. In the end somebody took him off to an empty classroom to lie down. It was a full hour before he was calm enough to try the charm himself. Even then, he kept snorting all the way through it. Flitwick, who was only about as tall as the pile of books he was standing on, beamed at him. ‘Most effective Cheering Charm I’ve seen all year, Mr Weasley!’ he squeaked. ‘Even if it was somebody else’s!’

Hermione had been in Ancient Runes at the time. Harry was nearly sure of it, because she had told him she would be. All the same, he could have sworn that he saw her at the back of the Charms classroom too, for one moment, pink in the face and clutching her bag, before Ron’s laughter distracted him. When he looked again, she was gone.

After dinner, the third years went straight back to their common rooms. Nobody was going to relax. There was still Hagrid’s exam to revise for, along with Potions and Astronomy.

*

Harry woke a little after two in the morning, feeling thirsty, and went down to the common room for a glass of water.

The fire had burnt down to a red glow. Hermione was sitting at the table by the window, still in her school robes, surrounded by a wall of books. She had a single candle at her elbow. She was crying quietly as she wrote, without seeming to notice that she was doing it.

‘Hermione?’

She gave such a violent start that her elbow caught the candle. Harry grabbed it before it could set fire to Advanced Rune Translation.

‘What are you doing down here?’ she whispered fiercely. ‘You should be asleep. You’ve got Care of Magical Creatures in the morning. And Potions. You need at least eight hours before Potions, Harry, I’ve read about it, it’s to do with the brain.’

‘So do you.’

‘I haven’t got eight hours.’ Her voice cracked. She pushed a sheet of parchment towards him. It was yet another timetable, written so small, with so many arrows and crossings-out, that Harry could hardly read it. ‘Look at it. Just look. I’ve worked it all out. If I revise Muggle Studies from half past five until six, I can do Potions from six until half past. After that... after that it goes wrong again. It keeps going wrong. Do you know how many hours there are in a day, Harry?’

‘Er... twenty-four?’

‘Twenty-four.’ Hermione laughed, a high, wobbly sort of laugh, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘Do you know how many I’ve had this week?’

‘Twenty-four?’ said Harry, more doubtfully.

‘Don’t,’ said Hermione. ‘Don’t ask. I can’t tell you. I’m not allowed to tell you.’ She put her face in her hands. ‘I’m so tired. I’m tired all the time. I keep forgetting what day it is. Yesterday I said good morning to Professor McGonagall twice, and she looked at me so oddly.’

Harry didn’t have the faintest idea what to say. He sat down opposite her and moved a pile of books so that he could see her face. After a moment she reached across the table and took hold of his wrist. Her fingers were cold and ink-stained. She held on surprisingly hard.

‘Don’t go back up yet,’ she said. ‘Stay. Just until I’ve finished this page.’

‘All right.’

‘You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’ She was looking at him very intently through her tears. ‘If she tried to talk to you. You’d tell me straight away.’

‘Who?’

‘You know who.’

‘Voldemort?’ said Harry, confused. “Yeah, but I’d punch him first.’

‘Malfoy,’ said Hermione, in the voice she usually kept for people who hadn’t done the reading. She let go of his wrist and picked up her quill again. ‘She’s up to something. I know she is. She’s been far too quiet. People like her don’t just go quiet, Harry. They wait.’

There was a creak on the boys’ staircase. Ron came down it in his maroon pyjamas, yawning, with his hair standing up on one side. He took one look at Hermione and stopped yawning.

‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘What’s happened? Who died?’

‘Nobody died,’ said Harry. ‘It’s the timetable.’

Ron didn’t say anything clever. He went over to the fire, poked it until it flickered back into life and put a pan of milk over the flames, working the charm Mrs Weasley used on the Burrow’s stove, which he had obviously been watching all his life without knowing he had learnt it. Five minutes later he put a mug of cocoa down in front of Hermione, then took the quill out of her hand and put it out of her reach.

‘Drink that,’ he said gruffly. ‘Then bed. You can have the quill back in the morning.’

‘I need to finish the-’

‘No, you don’t. You know it all already. You knew it all at Easter. You’ll still know it all tomorrow, and you’ll know it better if you’ve been asleep.’

Hermione stared at him. Harry had never heard Ron sound so sensible. From her face, neither had she. She drank her cocoa without another word. When she had finished it, she leant sideways against Harry’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

‘Just for a minute,’ she mumbled.

She was asleep almost at once. Harry didn’t move, so as not to wake her. Across the table, Ron was gathering up her books and stacking them in neat piles, sorted by subject. He kept glancing at Hermione asleep on Harry’s shoulder, then glancing away again, with an odd look on his face that Harry couldn’t read at all in the firelight.

‘You’re a good mate, Ron,’ said Harry quietly.

‘Yeah,’ said Ron, after a moment. He put the last book on the pile. ‘Yeah. That’s me.’

*

Hagrid was in charge of their Care of Magical Creatures exam on Tuesday morning. He seemed to have his mind on something else entirely. He had carried up a big tub of flobberworms, fresh that morning. ‘All yeh’ve gotta do,’ he told the class, ‘is keep it alive fer an hour.’ Flobberworms did best when nobody touched them at all, so nobody had ever sat an easier exam. It also meant that Harry, Ron and Hermione had plenty of time to talk to Hagrid.

‘Beaky’s gettin’ a bit depressed,’ Hagrid muttered, bending down as if to check on Harry’s flobberworm. ‘Bin cooped up too long. But still... we’ll know day after tomorrow-one way or the other-’

He straightened up and moved off down the line, blowing his nose like a foghorn.

Malfoy was kneeling at the far end of the row, apart from the rest of the Slytherins. She wasn’t paying the least attention to her flobberworm, which, as a result, was in better health than anybody else’s. She was gazing at Hagrid’s cabin, where Buckbeak had been shut up ever since the date of the appeal came through. Every so often she glanced from the cabin’s back door to the big tree behind the pumpkin patch, then to the edge of the Forest. Her lips moved as though she were counting. Once she looked down at a scrap of parchment in her hand and wrote something on it.

Harry felt the old, hard twist in his stomach. She had come to stare at Buckbeak again, he thought, just as she had in that lesson by the paddock fence. He wished he could stop thinking about the castle steps.

*

Potions, that afternoon, was a complete disaster. However hard Harry tried, his Confusing Concoction refused to thicken.

Snape had set the benches out himself that morning, and by some stroke of luck Malfoy was working just across the gangway from Harry. Her own potion was already the deep, smoky blue that the instructions on the board described. She stirred it with one hand and kept her eyes on her cauldron, but halfway through the exam Harry heard her whisper, without moving her lips at all.

‘Too much scurvy-grass, Potter. You’ve curdled it. Take it off the heat.’

Harry took it off the heat.

‘Sneezewort,’ came the whisper, a minute later. ‘Two sprigs. Not three. Can’t you count?’

Harry had already put in three. He fished one out again with his fingers and burnt them.

‘Now stir it anticlockwise. Anticlockwise. Oh, for... the other anticlockwise.’

‘There’s only one anticlockwise,’ Harry muttered.

‘Is there, Potter?’ said a soft, cold voice right behind him. ‘How fascinating. Do share any other discoveries you make with the rest of the class.’

Snape was standing at his shoulder. He looked down into Harry’s cauldron, which was still as thin as tea, with an expression of the deepest satisfaction. Then he turned his black eyes on Malfoy.

‘I trust, Miss Malfoy,’ he said silkily, ‘that you are not assisting Potter.’

‘Assisting him, sir?’ Malfoy didn’t even look up. ‘I was telling him he’s hopeless. He doesn’t seem to have heard me.’

The Slytherins sniggered. Snape’s thin mouth twitched at one corner. He bent over Malfoy’s cauldron, breathed in the fumes and said, ‘Excellent,’ in a tone Harry had never once heard him use to a Gryffindor. He moved back to Harry, dipped a ladle into the watery mess, let it dribble back into the cauldron and scribbled something on his clipboard. It looked suspiciously like a zero. Then he swept away.

Harry looked across the gangway. Malfoy was bottling her potion with perfectly steady hands. Her face gave nothing away. But as she stoppered the flask, she gave him the smallest sideways glance, and the corner of her mouth went up. Harry didn’t know what to make of it at all.

*

Astronomy was at midnight, up on the top of the tallest tower.

It was a beautiful night for it, warm and clear, with every star out. Harry sat with his eye to his telescope, trying to fill in the positions of Jupiter’s moons on his star chart before his hand went numb. The only sounds were the scratching of quills and Professor Sinistra’s footsteps going slowly round the parapet.

He looked up to rest his eyes, and saw Malfoy.

She was at the end of the parapet, a little apart from the others, where the tower looked out over the grounds. Her telescope was tilted right down, away from the stars, towards the faint orange light in the window of Hagrid’s cabin, and she had her eye pressed to it. Harry could just make out the pale gleam of her hair in the starlight.

‘Miss Malfoy,’ said Professor Sinistra mildly, coming round the parapet, ‘I believe you will find Jupiter in the other direction.’

‘Sorry, Professor.’

She tilted the telescope back up at the sky. Before she did, though, she scribbled something quickly on the back of her star chart. Harry was too far off to see what it was. He supposed she was gloating over Buckbeak again, in the dark, where nobody could see her doing it. It was a nasty thought, and he found that he didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t think of anything else she might be doing.

*

History of Magic was on Wednesday morning.

They waited outside the classroom with everybody else, while Ron tested Hermione on the dates of the goblin rebellions. He had made a set of little cards for her, with the questions on the front and the answers on the back, written in his large, messy handwriting. Harry had never known Ron make anything for anybody before, unless you counted trouble.

‘What are you writing about, Harry?’ said Hermione, when Ron had run out of cards. ‘For the long essay. They always ask about the witch burnings, so you’ll have to do something on them.’

‘I know,’ said Harry. ‘I’m going to do the burnings, but properly. Not just the Flame-Freezing Charm, and Wendelin the Weird letting them burn her forty-seven times because she liked the tickly feeling. I’m going to put in all the stuff Florean Fortescue told me over the summer, about how frightened the Muggles were and why. Then I thought I’d put in what the Fat Friar said.’ He hesitated. ‘About how it was all right for a long while, before it went wrong. About the wise women in the villages, the priests nodding to them on the way out of church, the Muggle-born boys going into the monasteries. Nobody ever writes that bit. Binns makes it sound as if wizards and Muggles were always at each other’s throats. They weren’t.’

Hermione stared at him. Then, quite suddenly, her whole face lit up.

‘Harry, that’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘No, honestly, it is. Nobody else is going to have anything like it. You’ve got a completely unique perspective, after all the research you’ve done this year, and you’ve got a primary source. A ghost, Harry. A ghost who was actually there! There’s no way you won’t get top marks for that. No way at all.’

She took his arm and squeezed it. She was smiling properly for the first time in weeks, a real, wide, delighted smile, and some of the grey seemed to have gone out of her face.

‘We should revise together more often,’ she said. ‘Just the two of us. We work so well together, don’t we? We always have. Ever since first year.’

‘Ron helped too,’ said Harry. ‘He made you all those cards.’

‘Yes,’ said Hermione vaguely, without letting go of his arm. ‘Yes, he did. That was nice of him.’

Behind her, Ron put his cards away in his pocket and looked at the floor. Harry thought he looked tired. He couldn’t blame him. Ron had stayed up late every evening that week, testing Hermione on things he didn’t understand, and he hadn’t complained once. That, Harry decided, was what a best friend ought to be like. He resolved to tell him so later.

In the exam, Harry wrote so fast that his hand ached. Every scrap of what Florean Fortescue had taught him about medieval witch-hunts went into it. Then he put in the Fat Friar, with his belief that magic had been given to wizards for a reason. By the time Professor Binns told them to put down their quills, he had covered both sides of four rolls of parchment and was starting on a fifth.

Malfoy had finished early. When Harry looked up to ask for more parchment, she was sitting with her arms folded, staring out of the window, which looked down over Hagrid’s cabin. On the desk in front of her, half hidden under her elbow, lay a scrap of parchment ruled into neat columns. Harry caught only a glimpse of it before she covered it with her hand. There were times written down one side, in her small, slanting writing, with notes beside them, as though she had made up a timetable of her own.

Not another one, thought Harry. Between Malfoy and Hermione, he had seen enough timetables that week to last him the rest of his life.

*

On Wednesday afternoon they had Herbology, out in the greenhouses, with the sun blazing down through the glass. By the time it was over, half the class had sunburnt necks. Neville had been bitten twice by a Fanged Geranium. ‘Only twice,’ he said, looking at his hand with something like pride. ‘I thought it’d be loads more.’ They trailed back to the common room hot, dirty and tired out, dreaming of this time tomorrow, when the last exam would be behind them.

*

On Thursday morning they had their last exam but one: Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Professor Lupin had set them the strangest exam they had ever taken. It was an obstacle course, laid out on the lawn in the sunshine. First came a deep paddling pool, which they had to wade through, with a grindylow lurking at the bottom. After that there was a row of potholes, each with a Red Cap crouching in it, then a patch of squelching marsh, where a hinkypunk bobbed about with its lantern, doing its best to lead people astray. At the very end stood an old trunk, with a fresh boggart shut up inside it.

Harry went fourth. He kicked the grindylow off his ankle without even looking down. He hopped across the potholes so lightly that the Red Caps were still reaching for his trainers after he had gone. He ignored the hinkypunk altogether, though it bobbed along beside him for some way, waving its lantern towards the deepest part of the bog in a hopeful manner. Then he climbed into the trunk, pulled the lid shut over his head and came face to face with a dementor in the dark.

For one moment the cold closed round him. But at the Ravenclaw match he had sent a Patronus streaming at three of them, even if they had turned out to be Malfoy and her friends in stolen robes. A pretend one in a box wasn’t much to be afraid of. He thought of Oliver Wood sobbing into his shoulder.

‘Riddikulus!’

The dementor was suddenly wearing Wood’s soaking Quidditch robes, about four sizes too small. It tripped over the hem and fell flat on its hood.

‘Excellent, Harry,’ Lupin murmured, when Harry scrambled out of the trunk with a grin all over his face. ‘Full marks.’

Harry glowed. He couldn’t help it. Lupin had said it quietly, almost under his breath, and nobody else had heard, but Harry felt that it was worth more than all the marks Snape had ever taken off him put together. He wanted Lupin to be pleased with him more than he wanted almost anything. All that day, whatever else happened, some part of him went on grinning.

He hung about at the edge of the course to watch the others. Ron got past the grindylow and the Red Caps without any trouble. The hinkypunk was his undoing. It bobbed up to him, beckoned and led him so cleverly astray that he ended up waist-deep in the marsh. It took Lupin and two Red Caps to pull him out. The Red Caps weren’t trying to help.

Malfoy was next. She went round the course without a single wasted movement. She had the grindylow off her ankle with one sharp jab of her wand before it had properly got hold. She crossed the potholes on tiptoe without once looking down, and when the hinkypunk waved its lantern at her, she gave it such a withering look that it went out. She was in the trunk for barely ten seconds. When she climbed out again she was rather white about the mouth, but her wand hand was perfectly steady.

‘Very good, Miss Malfoy,’ said Lupin. ‘Very good indeed. Full marks.’

Malfoy looked straight past him, across the lawn, at Harry. Then she looked away again.

Harry decided this was his chance. He couldn’t very well walk up to her in front of every Slytherin in the year, though. It took him ages. First he drifted round the edge of the paddling pool, pretending to be fascinated by the grindylow. Then Crabbe and Goyle planted themselves right in his way, eating something out of a paper bag, so he had to pretend to tie his shoelace for nearly a minute. Then Pansy Parkinson looked round. Harry stopped to watch the hinkypunk with great interest until she lost interest in him. By the time he had worked his way round to the potholes, Malfoy had moved off under the beech trees, out of sight of the others. She was standing with her back against a beech, watching him come. Harry was nearly sure she was smiling.

‘Malfoy,’ he said, under his breath. ‘That was-’

Then Hermione screamed.

Hermione had gone round the whole course without a single mistake, right up to the trunk. She was inside it for perhaps a minute before she burst out again, shrieking, with her hands over her face.

‘Hermione!’ said Lupin, startled. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘P-P-Professor McGonagall!’ Hermione gasped, pointing a shaking finger at the trunk. ‘Sh-she said I’d failed everything!’

Harry forgot all about Malfoy. He was across the lawn before he knew that he had moved, with his arm round Hermione’s shoulders, steering her away from the trunk. She was shaking from head to foot.

‘It wasn’t real,’ he told her. ‘Hermione, it wasn’t real, it was the boggart. You haven’t failed anything. You’ve never failed anything in your life. You probably got full marks for screaming.’

Hermione sobbed into the front of his robes. Harry patted her back awkwardly. Over the top of her bushy head he could see the beech trees. Malfoy was still standing under them, exactly where he had left her, with her mouth half open on whatever she had been going to say. Her face had changed. Harry had seen her look at Hermione like that twice before: outside the dungeons in September, and on the castle steps. It was the look of somebody watching a thief walk off with something that belonged to her, and thinking about what she might do to get it back. Harry couldn’t think what Hermione could possibly have taken.

Ron had come squelching up beside them, dripping marsh water from the waist down. He was looking at Hermione, and Harry saw his face go suddenly blank with surprise.

Harry couldn’t see Hermione’s face. Ron could. With her cheek still pressed against Harry’s chest, Hermione had turned her head slightly, so that she was looking straight at Malfoy through her tears. For one second the corner of her mouth curled up in a small, triumphant smirk. Then it was gone, and she was sobbing again.

Malfoy saw it. She came out from under the beech trees at once.

‘Failed everything,’ she said, in a high, carrying voice. ‘Poor Granger. I was in that trunk for ten seconds. Full marks. All those books, and you go to pieces in a box.’ Her chin went up. ‘I suppose you’ll still come top in the written papers, won’t you? You always do. You always, always do. It must be so easy to be top in everything when nobody at home expects anything of you at all.’

Hermione lifted her head from Harry’s robes. Her eyes were red, but her voice, when it came, was as cold as the lake in January.

‘At least my boggart was only a teacher, Malfoy,’ she said. ‘Yours was your own father, wasn’t it? I remember it. We all do. “Second in Potions, behind a Mudblood.” I expect he’ll be saying it for real when the results come out.’

Malfoy flinched as though she had been slapped. Then she smiled, very sweetly.

‘Do you know why he’s holding you like that, Granger?’ she said. ‘It isn’t because he likes you. He’d do the same for Longbottom. He’d do it for a kicked Kneazle. Potter’s kind to anything pathetic. That’s all you are to him, a charity case with a library ticket. Everybody can see it except you.’

Hermione went white. For a moment Harry thought she was going to cry again. Instead she stepped out of his arm and drew herself up, with her chin quite as high as Malfoy’s.

‘Then I made a mistake, mentioning your father,’ she said. ‘I don’t care about him, Malfoy. I never have. It’s Harry I’m worried about. And you can stop looking at him like that, because Harry is never going to be friends with a dark witch like you. Not ever.’

She said friends in a way that made Pansy Parkinson, a little way off, put her hand over her mouth. Harry didn’t understand what was so special about the word. He was fairly sure he was missing something.

Malfoy’s face went a deep, blotchy red.

‘You filthy little Mudblood,’ she spat. ‘Look at you. Look at your hair. It looks as if you’ve been dragged backwards through the Whomping Willow. You stick your hand up in every lesson, you tell everybody the answer before they’ve even heard the question, and you think that makes you special. Nobody asked you, Granger! Nobody ever asks you! You’re a know-it-all, buck-toothed, bossy little swot, and the only reason anybody puts up with you is that they need to copy your homework!’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Ron had gone scarlet to the roots of his hair. He lunged forward, dripping, with his wand out. Harry grabbed the back of his robes just in time. ‘Don’t you dare talk to her like that, you prissy, two-faced little bitch! She’s worth ten of you! She’s worth a hundred of you!’

‘Right,’ said Harry loudly, hanging on to Ron with one hand and to Hermione with the other. ‘Let’s just get this straight, shall we? Hermione’s boggart told her she’d failed everything. Malfoy’s boggart told her she came second. Mine was a dementor in Wood’s Quidditch robes. Ron’s still got half the marsh down his trousers.’ He looked round at them all. ‘I reckon that means the boggart’s the only one here who’s had a good morning.’

There was a pause. Then Hermione gave a small, damp, startled snort of laughter, and some of the stiffness went out of her shoulders.

‘That’s not funny,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘That’s not even slightly funny, Harry.’ But she was half smiling.

Malfoy saw the smile, and her eyes narrowed to silver slits.

‘Oh, very good, Potter,’ she said. ‘Make her laugh. Pat her on the head. That’s all she’s good for, isn’t it? Being comforted. I expect she’ll need it again when-’

Hermione spun round with her wand already in her hand. Malfoy’s wand came out of her sleeve just as fast. Crabbe and Goyle lumbered forward. Ron lunged again, and this time Harry wasn’t sure he could hold him-

‘Ladies.’

Professor Lupin had arrived between them. Harry hadn’t seen him come. He wasn’t holding his wand, but neither Hermione nor Malfoy seemed able to point theirs at anything while he stood there.

‘Wands away, please,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Now. Both of you. Unless you would like to finish the exam in my office, with Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape looking on. I’m sure they’d both be fascinated.’

Slowly, the wands went away.

Lupin looked at the two girls glaring at each other across the grass. Then he looked at Harry between them, with an armful of Ron and an expression of complete bewilderment on his face. For one horrible moment he was back in his schooldays, standing in the entrance hall while Narcissa Black and her sister Bellatrix tried to hex each other’s eyebrows off over James Potter. James had stood between them exactly like that, wearing exactly that look. A sound escaped from Lupin, something between a groan and a laugh. He turned it into a cough, not very successfully.

‘Professor?’ said Harry. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Hay fever,’ said Lupin, rather thickly. ‘It’s the grass. Miss Malfoy, I think your housemates are waiting for you. Ron, you’d better get up to the castle and find some dry trousers before you catch something from that bog. Hermione...’ His voice softened. ‘It was a boggart, Hermione. That’s all it was. Take a few minutes.’

Malfoy turned on her heel and stalked off towards the Slytherins, who closed round her at once. Lupin went back to the trunk, where Neville was waiting to go next with the expression of a man about to be fed to a dragon. Lupin’s shoulders were still shaking slightly.

It took a good while to calm Hermione down. In the end it was Ron who managed it. He didn’t make a speech. He sat down on the grass beside her, dripping, with marsh weed hanging off his knees.

‘McGonagall would never say that,’ he told her gruffly. ‘Not to you. Not if you set fire to the staff room.’

Hermione sniffed.

‘I saw your Arithmancy homework once,’ Ron went on. ‘By accident. It gave me a headache for two days.’ He scratched his ear. ‘If Hermione Granger’s failed anything, the rest of us might as well pack it in. I’ll go off to Romania to keep dragons with Charlie. You can come and visit.’

‘You’d be eaten in a week,’ said Hermione, with a watery sniff.

‘Yeah, probably.’

At that, she laughed properly. When at last she had got hold of herself again, the three of them set off up the lawn towards the castle.

Harry looked back once.

Malfoy was standing a little way apart from the knot of Slytherins by the lake, quite alone, watching him go. She looked very small against the glittering water.

Dracina knew perfectly well what Granger thought she had won. It didn’t matter. Granger could hang on to Harry’s robes and cry all she liked. Harry hadn’t the faintest idea what he wanted yet, and Dracina did, because she had known for a year, ever since the Chamber. When he knew it too, he would know where to find her. Until then, there was a hippogriff shut up in Hagrid’s cabin, and she had a job to do. She had promised to put it right. She was not going to think about anything else until she had.

Harry didn’t know any of this. He only saw her standing there by herself. Before he could think better of it, he caught her eye across the lawn, gave her a small nod and lifted his hand, with his thumb up, half hidden by his side. Well done, it meant, sorry, and something else he didn’t have a word for.

Malfoy’s whole face changed. For a moment she beamed at him, quite openly, without caring who saw. Her knight had seen her, and he was pleased with her; it was all she needed. Then she turned away towards the castle with her shoulders back, walking very fast, with the air of a soldier who had been given her orders and meant to carry them out.

*

Now that Hermione had recovered, Ron kept being overtaken by the giggles about her boggart, the way people sometimes laugh after a bad fright. He kept trying not to, which only made it worse. By the time they reached the front steps, Hermione had begun to look dangerous again. What stopped the row was the person waiting for them at the top.

Cornelius Fudge was standing there in his pinstriped cloak, sweating a little in the heat and gazing out over the grounds. He jumped when he saw Harry.

‘Hello there, Harry!’ he said. ‘Just had an exam, I expect? Nearly finished?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry.

Harry put on the same manner he had used in the Leaky Cauldron last summer, all politeness, saying ‘Minister’ and ‘with respect’ in all the right places. Fudge had lapped it up then. He was an older Percy, really: a man who liked very much to be agreed with, who swelled up when he was praised and went down like a pricked balloon when he wasn’t. In their second year Harry had watched Hermione smile and flutter at Gilderoy Lockhart until he signed a note for the Restricted Section without even reading it. Harry meant to lay it on just as thickly now.

‘It’s really good to see you, Minister,’ he said, and smiled. ‘I didn’t know you’d be coming up to Hogwarts. You must be awfully busy, with Black and everything. It’s good of you to come all this way yourself.’

Fudge looked startled for a moment. Then he puffed out his chest.

‘Well... well, yes, it is rather a busy time, Harry, very busy indeed. But I like to see things for myself, you know. Never trust a report you haven’t read twice, that’s my motto.’

‘That’s a really good motto,’ said Harry warmly.

A little way behind him, Hermione had gone rigid. Harry didn’t see her face. If he had, he would have seen it go from surprise to understanding. He learnt that from me, Hermione was thinking. He watched me do it to Lockhart. For one uncomfortable second she saw herself as Lockhart must have seen her, simpering over a library note, and she didn’t much like it. Then a strange, soft glow spread over her face. He remembered. He’s been watching me all along. It was, she decided, the most romantic thing that had ever happened to her. It was proof, if she had needed any, that she and Harry were meant to be together.

She and Ron hung back rather awkwardly. Neither of them knew the Minister for Magic well enough to say hello to him.

Further off still, half hidden behind one of the great stone urns at the end of the terrace, stood Malfoy. She was quite close enough to hear every word. She was frowning at Fudge, as if she couldn’t think what the Minister for Magic was doing at Hogwarts today of all days. Harry didn’t notice her at all.

‘Lovely day,’ said Fudge, gazing out across the lake. ‘Pity... pity...’

He gave a heavy sigh and turned back to Harry.

‘I’m here on an unpleasant mission, Harry. The Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures required a witness to the execution of a mad hippogriff. As I needed to visit Hogwarts to check on the Black situation, I was asked to step in.’

‘Oh,’ said Harry. He made his voice sound casual, which was hard. ‘I suppose they’re lucky it’s you, Minister. Somebody fair, I mean. Everyone says you don’t let anybody push you about. Not even Mr Malfoy.’

‘Ah,’ said Fudge. He went a little pink about the ears. ‘Well. Lucius is a very generous man, of course. Very generous indeed, to all sorts of good causes. But naturally the Committee is entirely independent, Harry, entirely. The Ministry doesn’t interfere in these matters. It wouldn’t do at all.’

‘Of course not. Only Hagrid says Buckbeak’s never hurt anybody except when he was insulted, and hippogriffs can’t help that, it’s in all the books. I bet you’d see that straight away, if you saw him for yourself. You notice things. Everybody says so.’

‘Do they?’ said Fudge, looking pleased in spite of himself. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say... I do try to keep an open mind, Harry, of course...’

‘Does that mean the appeal’s already happened?’ Ron interrupted, stepping forward.

Harry could have kicked him.

‘No, no, it’s scheduled for this afternoon,’ said Fudge, peering at Ron with some curiosity.

‘Then you might not have to witness an execution at all!’ said Ron stoutly. ‘The hippogriff might get off!’

Fudge had no chance to reply. Just then the doors behind him opened, and two more wizards stepped out. One was so old that he seemed to be shrivelling up as they watched. The other was tall and burly, with a thin black moustache. Harry guessed that they must be from the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. The very old wizard squinted down the lawn towards Hagrid’s cabin and spoke in a thin, quavering voice.

‘Dear, dear, I’m getting too old for this... Two o’clock, isn’t it, Fudge?’

The man with the moustache was fingering something at his belt. Harry looked down. A broad thumb was moving slowly up and down the edge of a shining axe.

Ron opened his mouth. Hermione’s elbow caught him in the ribs, quite hard, before anything could come out of it.

‘I think it’s brilliant you came in person, Minister,’ Harry said quickly, very loudly. ‘Honestly. At least now we know it’ll all be done properly.’

‘Quite right, Harry, quite right,’ said Fudge, beaming at him, and patted him on the shoulder.

Hermione nodded sharply at the doors into the entrance hall.

As Harry turned to go, something moved at the end of the terrace. Malfoy had come out from behind the stone urn. She wasn’t looking at him now. She was staring from Fudge to the axe, then back to Fudge. Her face had turned as white as paper. For a moment she stood frozen. Then she whirled round and ran, so fast that she almost knocked over a pair of first years, with her robes flying out behind her. She vanished round the corner of the castle.

Harry stared after her. He supposed she was upset about something. It never occurred to him that the Minister’s arrival might have anything to do with it, or that the sight of an executioner stroking his axe at lunchtime had just torn somebody’s careful timetable into little pieces.

*

‘Why’d you stop me?’ said Ron angrily, as they went into the Great Hall for lunch. ‘Did you see them? They’ve even got the axe ready! This isn’t justice!’

‘Ron, your dad works for the Ministry, you can’t go saying things like that to his boss!’ said Hermione, but she looked very upset herself. ‘As long as Hagrid keeps his head this time, and argues his case properly, they can’t possibly execute Buckbeak...’

Harry could tell that she didn’t really believe it.

‘And what was all that, anyway?’ Ron rounded on Harry as they sat down. ‘“It’s really good to see you, Minister.” “That’s a really good motto, Minister.” You sounded like Percy. You sounded like Percy sucking up.’

‘It worked, though, didn’t it?’ said Harry. ‘He told us when it was. We saw who’s on the Committee. He nearly told us Malfoy’s dad had paid them off.’

‘He did not.’

‘“Lucius is a very generous man, of course,”’ said Harry, in Fudge’s fussy voice. ‘“Very generous indeed.” What did you think he meant?’

Ron opened his mouth, then shut it again.

‘You did it the way I did it with Lockhart,’ said Hermione suddenly. She was gazing at Harry across the table with a very odd expression. Her cheeks had gone pink. ‘In second year. With the note for the Restricted Section. You watched me, didn’t you? You remembered exactly how I did it.’

‘Er,’ said Harry. ‘I suppose so. Yeah.’

‘I knew it.’ Hermione picked up her fork with a small, satisfied smile, looking as smug as if she had just come top in an exam. ‘We’re very alike, you and me, Harry. Underneath. I’ve always thought so.’

Ron stabbed a potato so hard that it shot off his plate.

All round them, people were chattering excitedly over lunch, looking forward to four o’clock, when the last exam would be over. Harry, Ron and Hermione couldn’t join in. They were too worried about Hagrid and Buckbeak. Harry looked over at the Slytherin table more than once, but Malfoy didn’t come in to lunch at all. Her place at the end of the bench stayed empty. Pansy Parkinson kept glancing at it and biting her lip.

‘Looking for somebody?’ said Hermione sharply.

‘No,’ said Harry.

*

Divination was the last exam for Harry and Ron. Hermione’s was Muggle Studies. The three of them climbed the marble staircase together as far as the first floor, where Hermione hurried off. Harry and Ron went on climbing, right up to the seventh, where half their class sat crammed along the spiral stairs below Professor Trelawney’s trapdoor, frantically flicking through their notes.

Harry wasn’t in the mood for any of it. He had had more than enough of Professor Trelawney this year. All year she had been predicting his death, in front of the whole class, with a hushed, delighted relish that made him want to throw something. She had laughed at his questions. She had told Hermione, to her face, that she had no gift for the subject whatsoever. She had seen the Grim in his tea leaves, in his crystal ball and very probably in his porridge. He was fed up with her, her crystal balls and her Grim.

‘She’s seeing us all separately,’ Neville told them, shuffling along the step to make room. Unfogging the Future lay open across his knees, at the chapter on crystal-gazing. ‘Have either of you ever seen anything in a crystal ball?’ he asked them unhappily.

‘Oh, wait, it’s becoming clear to me.’ Harry put his hands round an imaginary crystal ball and gazed deep into it with his eyes very wide. ‘Yes, the mists are parting and the ball is clear. I predict a cloudy day.’

He wiggled his fingers mysteriously over the ball that wasn’t there. Then he burped.

‘No, sorry. That was indigestion. The portents elude me.’

Ron choked on a laugh. Neville giggled so much that he nearly slid down three steps, and Seamus, a few stairs up, laughed so hard he dropped his book on Dean’s head.

The queue outside the classroom grew shorter very slowly. Whenever a pair of feet appeared on the silver ladder, everybody waiting pounced on its owner. ‘What did she ask? Was it OK?’

None of them would say.

‘She says the crystal ball’s told her that if I tell you, I’ll have a horrible accident!’ squeaked Neville, slithering down the ladder. By now Harry and Ron had reached the landing at the top of the stairs.

‘That’s convenient,’ snorted Ron. ‘You know, I’m starting to think Hermione was right about her.’ He jerked his thumb at the trapdoor overhead. ‘She’s a right old fraud.’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry. He looked at his watch. It was two o’clock already. Down on the lawn, he thought, the appeal would be starting. ‘Wish she’d hurry up...’

Parvati climbed down next, pink with pride.

‘She says I’ve got all the makings of a true Seer,’ she told Harry and Ron. ‘I saw loads of stuff... Well, good luck!’

She hurried away down the spiral staircase to tell Lavender.

‘Ronald Weasley,’ came the familiar, misty voice from above.

Ron pulled a face at Harry and went up the ladder two rungs at a time. Now Harry was the only one left to be tested. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floorboards. A fly was buzzing against the sunny window, over and over, without ever learning anything. Harry listened to it with only half his mind. The other half was down in the grounds, with Hagrid.

It was twenty minutes before Ron’s large feet came back into view on the ladder.

‘How’d it go?’ Harry asked him, getting up.

‘Rubbish,’ said Ron. ‘Couldn’t see a thing, so I made some stuff up. Don’t think she was convinced, though...’

‘Meet you in the common room,’ Harry muttered. Above him, the misty voice was already calling, ‘Harry Potter!’

It was stifling in the tower room, even hotter than usual. The curtains were drawn against the sun, a fire was blazing in the grate, and the sickly perfume made Harry cough as he picked his way through the clutter of little tables. Professor Trelawney was waiting for him in front of a large crystal ball.

‘Ah, Harry,’ she said softly. ‘Sit, sit. Look deep into the Orb, my dear, and tell me what the mists reveal...’

Harry sat down and looked into the crystal ball. He saw a lot of white mist, a small, upside-down reflection of his own glasses and the end of his nose. He had a sudden, overwhelming urge to take the mickey.

‘Oh,’ he said, in a hushed voice. ‘Oh, Professor. I can see something.’

Professor Trelawney leant forward eagerly, her bangles clanking. ‘Yes? Yes?’

‘It’s a teapot,’ said Harry. ‘No. Wait. It’s a teapot that wants to be a tortoise. But it can’t. It hasn’t got the legs for it.’

‘Ah!’ Professor Trelawney clasped her thin hands together. ‘The vessel that yearns for transformation! A powerful omen, my dear. A very powerful omen indeed. Somebody close to you is longing for change, but cannot yet take the first step. Go on.’

Harry stared at her. She seemed to be completely serious. He looked back into the ball.

‘Now it’s gone dark,’ he said solemnly. ‘There’s a shape. A big, black, shaggy shape. It’s... it’s Ron’s sock. The one he lost in October. It’s been under his bed all along.’

‘The Grim,’ breathed Professor Trelawney, ‘disguising itself, as it so often does, in the humblest of forms! Oh, my poor boy. Death draws ever nearer, even in the most domestic of guises. I shall make a note of it.’ She scribbled on a piece of parchment. ‘Anything further?’

Harry was beginning to enjoy himself.

‘A bird,’ he said. ‘A great big bird. It’s eating a ferret. No, hang on, it’s eaten the ferret. It looks very pleased with itself. Now it’s gone to sleep.’

‘Contentment after conflict! Satiety! The hunter at rest!’ Professor Trelawney’s magnified eyes were shining. ‘You have a remarkable gift, my dear. Remarkable. I always sensed it.’

‘And now,’ said Harry, gazing deep into the mist and putting on his most mysterious voice, ‘I can see the future of Divination at Hogwarts. It’s very foggy. You can’t see anything at all through it. Nothing whatsoever. It just goes on and on, being foggy, forever.’

‘Clouded,’ whispered Professor Trelawney, ‘by the ignorance of those who cannot See. Oh, how true. How very, very true.’ She dabbed at her eyes with the end of one of her shawls. ‘Harry, my dear, I don’t think I have ever seen the Inner Eye open so wide in one so young. I shall be giving you the highest marks I have awarded since I came to Hogwarts.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Harry flatly.

It was the most annoying thing that had happened to him all year. He had spent ten months squinting into tea leaves, crystal balls and the palms of his own hands, without any luck at all. Now he had spent five minutes making fun of her whole subject, and she was going to give him top marks for it. He picked up his bag and got to his feet. He was trying to think of one last remark, the most ridiculous he could manage, as a parting shot.

‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll be off. Thanks, Professor. I predict you’ll find your other shawl behind the-’

‘It will happen tonight.’

Harry spun round.

Professor Trelawney was sitting bolt upright in her armchair, as stiff as a poker. Her eyes were blank. Her mouth hung slack.

‘You what?’ asked Harry.

If she heard him, she gave no sign. Her eyes were rolling back in her head. Harry stood there, frozen with panic. She looked as if she were about to have a fit. He hesitated, wondering whether to run for the hospital wing. Then the voice came again, harsh and deep, nothing like her own.

‘The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight... the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant’s aid, greater and more terrible than ever he was. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master...’

Harry stood rooted to the spot with his bag in his hand. The hair on the back of his neck was prickling. He had faced Voldemort twice already, and twice Voldemort had very nearly come back. Something hard and bitter rose in Harry.

‘Then I’ll have to stop him again, won’t I... bloody hell.’ Harry sighed. He’d never have a normal year at Hogwarts.

Professor Trelawney’s head dropped forward onto her chest. She gave a sort of grunt. Harry stood staring at her.

A moment later her head came up again with a jerk.

‘I’m so sorry, dear boy,’ she said dreamily, ‘the heat of the day, you know... I drifted off for a moment...’

Harry went on staring at her.

‘Is there anything wrong, my dear?’

‘Well, you divined the spirits or whatever and just told me the Dark Lord’s going to rise again... that his servant’s going to go back to him...’

Professor Trelawney looked extremely taken aback.

‘The Dark Lord? He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? My dear boy, that’s hardly something to joke about... Rise again, indeed-’

‘You went all wobbly, like you were having a fit! You said the Dark Lord-’

‘I think you must have dozed off too, dear!’ said Professor Trelawney.

‘No, Professor. You dozed off. Or went funny. Whatever it was.’

‘I would certainly not presume to predict anything quite as far-fetched as that!’

‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ said Harry, bitterly and dryly.

He let himself down the silver ladder and set off down the spiral stairs, wondering. Had that been a real prophecy, the genuine article, from Professor Trelawney of all people? Or was it just her notion of a dramatic finish to an exam?

*

Five minutes later he was running along the seventh-floor corridor towards the Fat Lady, with Professor Trelawney’s words still ringing in his head. The security trolls were on guard outside her portrait, as usual.

The Fat Lady had taken a great fancy to the trolls. Ever since she had come home, she had been flirting with them outrageously, and today she was worse than ever. She had put on her best pink silk. Now she was arranged in her frame with her chin on one plump hand, fluttering her eyelashes at the largest troll, who was picking his teeth with a splinter of the banister.

‘Oh, you are awful,’ she giggled. ‘You big, strong, silent brute. Has anybody ever told you that you have the most expressive eyebrows?’

The troll grunted.

‘Oh, stop it,’ said the Fat Lady, delighted. ‘Stop it this minute, you’ll make me blush.’

‘Flibbertigibbet,’ said Harry.

‘Must you?’ said the Fat Lady crossly, but she swung forward to let him in.

People were streaming past him the other way, laughing and joking, heading out to the grounds for a bit of freedom at last. By the time he had climbed in through the portrait hole, the common room was almost empty. Ron and Hermione were sitting in a corner by the window.

‘Professor Trelawney,’ Harry panted, ‘just told me-’

Then he saw their faces, and stopped.

‘Buckbeak lost,’ said Ron weakly. ‘Hagrid’s just sent this.’

This time Hagrid hadn’t cried on his note. The writing wobbled all over the page, though, as if his hand had been shaking too badly to hold the quill.

Lost appeal. They’re going to execute at sunset. Nothing you can do. Don’t come down. I don’t want you to see it.

Hagrid

‘We’ve got to go,’ said Harry at once. ‘I’m not going to just let him sit there on his own, waiting for the bloody executioner!’

‘Sunset, though,’ said Ron, who was gazing out of the window with a glazed look in his eyes. ‘We’d never be allowed... ’specially you, Harry...’

Harry put his head in his hands and thought.

‘If we only had the Invisibility Cloak...’

‘Where is it?’ said Hermione.

‘I panicked when Filch came round with his sack,’ said Harry. ‘I dropped it down the chute under the one-eyed witch. It’s still there. Snape’s been hanging round that corridor ever since, so...’ He spread his hands. ‘... if Snape sees me anywhere near there again, I’m in serious trouble,’ he finished.

‘That’s true,’ said Hermione, standing up. She had a strange, bright, determined look on her face, which Harry would have recognised, if he had been paying attention, from the day she had set fire to Snape’s robes in their first year. Hermione had decided that if anybody was going to rescue Harry this week, it was going to be her. It was certainly not going to be Malfoy. ‘If he sees you... How do you open the witch’s hump again?’

‘You-you tap it and say, “Dissendium”,’ said Harry. ‘But-’

Hermione didn’t stay to hear the end of it. She was across the room before Harry had finished his sentence. The portrait hole banged shut behind her. Harry had once seen a man in a red suit on the Dursleys’ television, on the news from America, running so fast that the cameras could only catch a streak of light. The newsreader said his name and Harry thought it was ridiculous that a superhero named himself after the same stuff that Aunt Petunia used on the kitchen floor. Hermione went very nearly as fast.

‘She hasn’t gone to get it?’ Ron said, staring after her.

‘Yeah, she did. Mate,’ said Harry, quite unable to believe it.

She had. Fifteen minutes later Hermione climbed back in through the portrait hole, rather out of breath, with the Cloak tucked out of sight under her robes. She handed it to Harry with a pleased, pink little smile. She didn’t give it to Ron to hold.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Somebody has to look after you, Harry. It might as well be somebody sensible.’

‘Hermione, I don’t know what’s got into you lately!’ said Ron, astounded. ‘First you absolutely batter Malfoy, then you walk out on Professor Trelawney-’

Hermione looked rather flattered.

*

At dinner time they went down to the Great Hall as usual. Harry had stuffed the Cloak inside his robes. All through the meal he sat with his arms folded over his chest, to hide the lump. Nobody seemed to notice. The whole school was in a holiday mood, now that the exams were over, and the noise in the Great Hall was deafening.

Malfoy wasn’t at dinner either. Harry looked for her twice. The second time, Hermione caught him at it.

‘She’s probably in the hospital wing,’ she said coldly, cutting up her chicken into very small pieces. ‘Having a lie-down. It must be exhausting, being that horrible all day.’

‘I wasn’t looking for her.’

‘No,’ said Hermione. ‘Of course you weren’t.’

Pansy Parkinson was sitting next to the empty place at the Slytherin table. She hadn’t eaten anything. Every few minutes she looked over her shoulder towards the doors, half expecting somebody to come through them, and afraid of who it might be.

When dinner was over, they didn’t go back up to Gryffindor Tower. Instead they slipped into an empty room off the entrance hall and waited, listening, until they were sure that everybody else had gone. They heard the last pair of stragglers hurry across the flagstones, laughing. A door banged somewhere. After that there was silence.

Hermione put her head round the door.

‘OK,’ she whispered, ‘no one there, cloak on.’

They huddled close together under the Cloak, so that no stray foot would show beneath the hem, and crept across the hall on tiptoe. Then they went down the great stone steps. Outside, the sun had already sunk low behind the Forbidden Forest, turning the tops of the trees to gold.

At the bottom of the steps, Harry caught a faint, sour smell on the warm air, like something that had been dead for a day or two. It was gone before he could place it. He supposed it was coming from Hagrid’s compost heap.

At Hagrid’s cabin, Harry knocked. It was a full minute before Hagrid answered. When he did, he stared all round for his visitor, white-faced and trembling.

‘It’s us,’ Harry hissed. ‘We’re wearing the Invisibility Cloak. Let us in and we can take it off.’

‘Yeh shouldn’ve come!’ Hagrid whispered, but he stood aside to let them in.

He shut the door behind them quickly. Harry pulled off the Cloak.

Hagrid didn’t cry. He didn’t fling his arms round their necks, either. He looked lost in his own house, as if he couldn’t think what he had come in for. Harry found that much harder to bear than tears would have been.

‘Wan’ some tea?’ he said. His huge hands were shaking as he picked up the kettle.

‘Where’s Buckbeak, Hagrid?’ said Hermione hesitantly.

‘I-I took him outside,’ said Hagrid. He was filling the milk jug as he spoke, and he slopped milk all over the table. ‘He’s tethered in me pumpkin patch. Thought he oughta see the trees an’-an’ smell fresh air-before-’

His hand gave such a violent jerk that the milk jug slipped out of it. It smashed to pieces on the floor.

‘I’ll do it, Hagrid,’ said Hermione quickly. She hurried over and began to mop up the mess.

‘There’s another one in the cupboard,’ said Hagrid. He sat down heavily and wiped his forehead on his sleeve.

Harry looked at Ron. Ron looked back at him, quite helpless.

‘Isn’t there anything anyone can do, Hagrid?’ Harry asked fiercely, sitting down beside him. ‘Dumbledore-’

‘He’s tried,’ said Hagrid. ‘He’s got no power ter overrule the Committee. He told ’em Buckbeak’s all right, but they’re scared... Yeh know what Lucius Malfoy’s like... threatened ’em, I expect... an’ the executioner, Macnair, he’s an old pal o’ Malfoy’s... but it’ll be quick an’ clean... an’ I’ll be beside him...’

Hagrid swallowed hard. His eyes kept darting about the cabin, as if he might find a scrap of hope lying in a corner somewhere, if only he looked hard enough.

‘Dumbledore’s gonna come down while it-while it happens. Wrote me this mornin’. Said he wants ter-ter be with me. Great man, Dumbledore...’

Hermione had been rummaging through Hagrid’s cupboard for the other milk jug. She gave a small sob, quickly stifled, and straightened up with the jug in her hands, blinking hard.

‘We’ll stay with you too, Hagrid,’ she began.

Hagrid shook his great shaggy head.

‘Yeh’re ter go back up ter the castle. I told yeh, I don’ wan’ yeh watchin’. An’ yeh shouldn’ be down here anyway... If Fudge an’ Dumbledore catch yeh out without permission, Harry, yeh’ll be in big trouble.’

Tears were running silently down Hermione’s face now, but she kept her back to Hagrid so that he wouldn’t see, and busied herself making the tea. She took the milk bottle to fill up the new jug. Then she gave a shriek.

‘Ron! I-I don’t believe it-it’s Scabbers!’

Ron gaped at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

Hermione carried the jug across to the table. She turned it upside down. Out slid Scabbers, squeaking frantically and scrabbling to get back in again.

‘Scabbers!’ said Ron blankly. ‘Scabbers, what are you doing here?’

He snatched up the wriggling rat to look at him in the light. Scabbers looked terrible. He was skinnier than ever. Great tufts of his fur had fallen out, leaving him patchy with bald spots. He twisted and squirmed in Ron’s grip as though he would do anything at all to get away.

‘It’s OK, Scabbers!’ said Ron. ‘No cats! There’s nothing here to hurt you!’

All at once Hagrid got to his feet. He was staring out of the window. His face, which was usually as red as a ripe apple, had gone the colour of old parchment.

‘They’re comin’...’

Harry, Ron and Hermione spun round. A little group of men was coming down the castle steps in the distance. Dumbledore was in front, his silver beard shining in the last of the sun. Fudge was trotting along beside him. The doddery old Committee member brought up the rear, along with Macnair and his axe.

‘Yeh gotta go,’ said Hagrid. He was trembling all over. ‘They mustn’ find yeh here... Go now...’

Ron shoved Scabbers deep into his pocket. Hermione snatched up the Cloak.

‘I’ll let yeh out the back way,’ said Hagrid.

He led them to the door at the back of the cabin. None of it felt real to Harry, least of all when he saw Buckbeak, tethered to a tree a few yards off, at the edge of the pumpkin patch.

The hippogriff seemed to sense that something was wrong. He kept turning his fierce head from side to side, pawing nervously at the ground. Every so often he stopped, stretched out his neck towards the dark edge of the Forest and sniffed the air, with his great orange eyes half closed, as though he were waiting for somebody. A small, furry heap lay at the end of his tether, mostly bones by now.

‘Someone left that on me doorstep las’ night,’ said Hagrid, in a dazed sort of voice. ‘Dead ferret. Gave it him this mornin’. Wasn’ one o’ mine.’ He shook his head. ‘Doesn’ matter now.’

He put his hand on Buckbeak’s neck.

‘It’s OK, Beaky,’ he said softly. ‘It’s OK...’

He turned back to Harry, Ron and Hermione.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get goin’.’

None of them moved.

‘Hagrid, we can’t-’

‘We’ll tell them what really happened-’

‘They can’t kill him-’

‘Go!’ said Hagrid fiercely. ‘It’s bad enough without you lot in trouble an’ all!’

There was nothing else they could do. Hermione flung the Cloak over the three of them. At the same moment, they heard voices outside Hagrid’s front door. Hagrid looked at the spot where they had just disappeared.

‘Go quick,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Don’ listen...’

There was a knock at the front door, and Hagrid went back inside.

Slowly, like sleepwalkers, Harry, Ron and Hermione crept round the side of Hagrid’s house without a sound. As they reached the far corner, they heard the front door shut with a sharp bang.

‘Please, let’s hurry,’ Hermione whispered. ‘I can’t stand it, I can’t bear it...’

They started back up the long, sloping lawn. The sun was sinking quickly now. Overhead, the sky had faded to a clear grey with a tinge of purple in it, though there was still a deep red glow in the west, over the mountains.

Ron stopped dead.

‘Oh, please, Ron,’ Hermione began.

‘It’s Scabbers…he won’t… ugh, stay put…’

Ron was bent double, struggling to hold Scabbers in his pocket. The rat had gone completely mad. He was squeaking shrilly, twisting and thrashing about, doing his best to bite Ron’s fingers.

‘Scabbers, it’s me, you idiot, it’s Ron,’ Ron hissed.

Behind them, a door opened. They heard men’s voices.

‘Oh, Ron, please let’s move, they’re going to do it!’ Hermione breathed.

‘OK, Scabbers, ruddy hell. Stay put…’

They walked on. Harry was trying, like Hermione, not to hear the low murmur of voices from behind them. Then Ron stopped again.

‘I can’t hold him, Scabbers, shut up, everyone’ll hear us-’

Scabbers was shrieking now. It wasn’t loud enough, though, to drown out what came drifting up the lawn. They heard a muddle of men’s voices that Harry couldn’t make out. There was a silence. Then, with no warning at all, came the swish of an axe through the air and a heavy thud.

Hermione swayed where she stood.

‘They did it!’ she whispered to Harry. ‘I d-don’t believe it-they did it!’

Harry couldn’t speak. He felt sick. He thought of Buckbeak sniffing the wind, waiting for somebody who hadn’t come.

Then, from behind the cabin, there came a great commotion: a bellow of rage, a crash of breaking wood, then the rush of enormous wings. Something huge and grey burst up out of Hagrid’s garden into the red evening sky, scattering leaves from the trees.

It was Buckbeak. His broken tether was trailing from his neck. He was beating his great wings, climbing higher with every stroke. And somebody was riding him.

Harry stared. The rider was crouched low over Buckbeak’s neck, wrapped from head to foot in a long black cloak with the hood pulled right down. The cloak streamed out behind like smoke as they climbed. Against the last of the sunset, it looked for all the world like a dementor. Harry would almost have laughed, if he hadn’t been so astonished. They were much too far away for him to see who it was. As the hippogriff wheeled away over the treetops, though, the rider seemed to turn to look back at the castle. One hand came up, very briefly, as though waving to somebody there.

Then they were gone, a dark speck against the red sky, sinking into the Forest.

From the garden below came a tremendous roar.

‘BEAKY! GO ON, BEAKY! GO ON, YEH BEAUTY!’

It was Hagrid. He was dancing about in his pumpkin patch, waving his enormous arms over his head, cheering at the top of his voice like a man at a Quidditch final.

‘Formal complaint!’ another voice was yelling, high and furious. Harry recognised it as belonging to the man with the black moustache. ‘I’m lodging a formal complaint, Hagrid, on behalf of the Executioners’ Union! You hear me? Nobody pays a man for a job he never done! You planned this! You set this up, you great oaf, you and your-’

‘I never!’ Hagrid bellowed, in tones of the purest joy. ‘I never planned nothin’! I never even knew! GO ON, BEAKY!’

‘Now, Walden, now, let’s all keep calm-’ That was Fudge, sounding flustered. ‘Dumbledore, did you... did anybody see who...?’

Harry thought he heard somebody laughing, quietly, somewhere underneath the uproar. It sounded very like Dumbledore.

Under the Cloak, the three of them stood frozen on the darkening lawn. Hermione had both hands pressed over her mouth. Scabbers had gone very quiet in Ron’s pocket.

‘What in Merlin’s name just happened,’ said Ron at last, faintly.

Harry looked up at the empty sky over the Forest, where the black speck had disappeared. He felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and he let it come.

‘Act of God, mate,’ he said.