Harry walked up the stairs with a headache brewing, and a cookie tin tucked underneath his arm.

"You know apparently, he reckons that he and Diggory duelled with You-Know-Who…"

"Oh come off it…"

"Points for consistency though,"

"I thought they were joking last year, who does he think he's kidding?"

"Pur- lease…"

Even by Hogwarts' usual standards, news travelled quick and far and the whispers that gathered around him pricked invasive, like a multitude of insect legs on his body. Harry knew that he could not let them goad him into further argument and so, he muscled through the hallways without snapping back. But he could not keep the blood from rushing to his face—it was a red that rivaled phoenix feathers and the inside of Ron's tiny room on The Burrow's fifth floor, and it did not fade by the time he reached the top of the staircase and stood in front of the Fat Lady's portrait.

"Mimbulus mimbletonia," he said, tentatively. She stopped admiring a glass goblet and looked to him with a raised eyebrow.

"Shouldn't you be at dinner?"

"Mimbulus. Mimbletonia." Harry repeated, firmer this time, with gritted teeth. The Fat Lady made a face and promptly swung open while he barged through, not bothering to explain to her that avoiding dinner was precisely the reason why he was here in the first place.

The common room was completely empty except for Crookshanks, who dozed slung over top of the House notice board. There were abandoned ink pots and parchments of homework left on tables, along with the occasional sweater and suspiciously wet pair of socks that were left piled in the corner, but other than these signs—along the roaring fire puffing smoke up the chimney—the common room looked perfectly and safely devoid of life.

Harry jumped and landed in the couch, shucking off his cloak and shoes and sticking his hand into McGonagall's cookie tin. The solitude was what he needed, it was obvious that he would have to cool down; if he could barely contain himself just walking through the hallways, he couldn't imagine being able to sit silently through dinner, where a thousand conversations could tip his temper to its boiling point.

He had yet to even go back and grab his bag—though by now, he felt content to just leave it within the classroom—he knew that at this moment he wouldn't be able to endure even a percent of a possibility that… that woman would be there; and that she would be waiting in the doorway with a smug face, ready to wrap this horrid day with a bow.

And while Harry chewed over Umbridge, staring deeply into the hearth of the fireplace, he heard the Fat Lady trill as her portrait swung open once more .

"Talk some sense into your friend, he'll go positively ill without dinner!"

Two heads—a mess of brown hair and a ginger flop—popped up in the corner of his eye before he suddenly felt two people leap and crash down beside him, their impact billowing dust from the cushions.

"Oh thank goodness, you're here!" Hermione said, pinching her nose.

Ron waved at the dust-filled air, coughing behind his other hand, "Yeah we were waiting for ages at the Hall and—hold on, where'd you get those cookies from?"

"Never mind that! Harry, we have your bag and some food if you—no, proper food, Ronald—if you're feeling hungry,"

"Why aren' 'ou guysh at di'er?" interrupted Harry, mouth already full.

"We were at dinner!" Ron said. He then made a delighted noise when Harry placed the cookie tin in his lap. "But you didn't come so we just stuffed shit into our bags and robes and—"

"Ron!"

"—Stuffed things into our bags and robes and came up here, thinking that you wouldn't be anywhere else," Ron said, correcting himself.

"We were really worried about you after class but… oh let's just eat first! I'm starving!"

As Harry forced his cookie down, he watched as Hermione took out tissues from her pocket and flattened them against the carpet before she turned her bag upside down and began to shake it directly overhead. Initially flummoxed at the sound of tinkling metal and porcelain, he could not believe his eyes as an intact shepherd's pie, a dozen legs of chicken, separate bowls of fruit and rice, a loaf of bread, biscuits, steak, some mutton chops and a couple of slices of a casserole complete with plates and three sets of cutlery all came spilling out; tumbling to the floor like it had fallen down some sort of chute.

Hermione looked over the food and back to her friends anxiously, "I thought that a bowl of soup or salad might spill so I didn't take any," she murmured. Harry could only stare back at her, open-mouthed while Ron sheepishly took out the three meagre slices of pie from his own pockets.

"I-I don't think a missing bowl of soup is really the thing to be concerned about here," Harry stammered, "Did you just… steal the plates? How did your bag even—what the…"

"I've been reading ahead in charms… it's alright, I'll return everything…" Hermione said distractedly, "We'll need to eat quickly though, I don't want any of the first-years coming in and getting inspired from their prefects doing this—"

"Hermione," Ron said, breathlessly, "I've told you this before and I'll probably say it many more times but you are brilliant."

"Seconded," said Harry. Hermione beamed at them, pleased, and they quickly dug in.

When they had finished and cleaned up, Harry, Ron and Hermione collected their school-bags from a corner and moved a large cedar table to the couch by the fireplace. Not long after, the Fat Lady swung open again, and the first few clusters of people who came back from dinner began to come through the common room.

Harry kept his face down and averted the portrait-hole, but he could only avoid so many of the stares, as the clusters became a flow of students all spending more than a moment glancing in his direction.

"Just ignore them," Ron muttered, he and Hermione seemed to permanently glare when they looked up.

Harry shook his head, clenching his teeth as it throbbed dully, "I can't believe people already know,"

"Yeah. Only because Malfoy was there to speed up the rumors,"

"Ugh."

As they worked, Harry spared them the details of his trip to McGonagall's office and mentioned only that he had been punished in daily detentions with Umbridge starting the next day. At once Ron deflated into the rug; almost letting his ink pot spill.

"It's not that bad," said Harry, but Ron, in his dramatic disassociation could still perfectly read his weak tone and the pallor of his face that yes; yes it is that bad.

"How can Dumbledore have let this happen?" Hermione cried suddenly, making Harry and Ron jump. Crookshanks leapt off her, looking affronted as she began to pound the arm of the couch in fury, so that bits of stuffing leaked out of the holes. "How can he let that terrible woman teach us? And in our O.W.L. year too!"

"Well, we've never had great Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers, have we?" said Harry, a little annoyed that Hermione had nothing else to say. "You know what it's like, Hagrid told us, nobody wants the job, they say it's jinxed."

"Yes, but to employ someone who's actually refusing to let us do magic! What's Dumbledore playing at?"

"And she's trying to get people to spy for her," said Ron darkly. "Remember when she said she wanted us to come and tell her if we hear anyone saying You-Know-Who's back?"

"Of course she's here to spy on us all, that's obvious, why else would Fudge have wanted her to come?" snapped Hermione.

"Don't start arguing again," said Harry wearily, as Ron opened his mouth to retaliate. "Can't we just… Let's just do that homework, get it out of the way…"

But before Harry could dip his quill into ink, a rather loud commotion of voices dragged their attention to the far corner of the room where Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were now sitting at the centre of a knot made up with innocent-looking first years, all of whom were chewing something that seemed to have come out of a large paper bag that Fred was holding.

" Oh no, I'm sorry, they've gone too far," Hermione said. She stood up, looking very determined. "Come on, Ron."

"I—what?" said Ron, plainly playing for time. "No—come on, Hermione—we can't tell them off for giving out sweets…"

"You know perfectly well that those 'sweets' are bits of Nosebleed Nougat or—or Puking Pastilles or—"

"Fainting Fancies?" Harry suggested quietly. Ron didn't have time to shoot him a look as one by one, as though hit over the heads with invisible mallets, the first years slumped unconscious in their seats.

Some slid right onto the floor while others merely hung over the arms of their chairs, tongues lolling out and causing most of those who watched to laugh hysterically; Hermione, however, squared her shoulders and marched directly over to where Fred and George stood with their clipboards, closely observing the unconscious first years.

Ron rose halfway out of his chair and hovered uncertainly for a moment or two, muttering a soft, "Oh no." Fred seemed to say something that made all their onlookers laugh at Hermione, who pushed her to the middle of the ring, guarding that first-years as they came to.

However, she grabbed Fred's clipboard and full paper bag and said, in a voice loud enough to hear from across the room, "I can't stop you from eating these yourselves but if you keep testing on the first-years, I will write to your mother, I swear it!"

Fred and George stared at her, petrified with fear—almost as if Hermione had morphed into a gorgon right in front of them—and with a last threatening look, she thrust Fred's clipboard and the bag of Fancies back into his arms and stalked back to her chair by the fire.

"Thank you for your support, Ron," she said acidly.

"You handled it fine by yourself," he mumbled back. He sank as low in his chair as his lanky frame permitted, with his nose roughly level with his knees.

"We're supposed to be a team!"

"I know, I'm sorry," Ron moaned, timidly. Hermione stared edgily down at her blank piece of parchment for a few seconds.

"Oh, it's no good, I can't concentrate now. I'm going to bed."

She then wrenched her bag open and pulled out two misshapen woolly objects, placed them carefully on a table by the fireplace, covered them with a few screwed-up bits of parchment and a broken quill, and stood back to admire the effect.

"They're hats for house-elves," she said, without even looking at Harry and Ron, and now stuffing her books back into her bag. "I did them over the summer. I'm a really slow knitter without magic, but now I'm back at school I should be able to make lots more."

"You're leaving out hats for the house-elves?" said Ron slowly. "And you're covering them up with rubbish first?"

"So what?" said Hermione defiantly, swinging her bag onto her back.

"That's not on," said Ron, annoyed. "You're trying to trick them into picking up the hats. You're setting them free when they might not want to-"

"Of course they want to be free!" said Hermione at once, though her face was turning pink.

"I didn't finish, that's not what I was trying to say!"

"I don't care. Don't you dare touch those hats, Ron!" she said.

Ron waited until she had disappeared through the door to the girls' dormitories, then turned to Harry, "Look, I know what she's meaning to do but I swear to-to... Hagrid's three-headed dog! This is against all the rules of liberation and bobs she's been on about, right?"

"Erm… A bit? I don't know…" said Harry hesitantly, he was not sure what Ron was talking about but he realized that Hermione had probably given him an earful before he had arrived at Grimmauld. Ron shook his head, and cleared the crumpled parchment from the hats, throwing each piece into the fireplace.

"They should at least see what they're picking up," he said firmly. He turned back to Harry once more, but this time in worry, "By the way, are you alright? You look—no offence mate—but you look bad."

Harry shook his head, noticing as he did so that the ache in his right temple was getting worse; just thinking about reading or writing a long essay on the properties of moonstone began to summon a pain that stabbed at him sharply.

So, knowing perfectly well that he would regret not finishing his homework when the morning would come, he piled his books back into his bag.

"Let's go to bed."

They passed Seamus on the way to the door leading to the dormitories, but Harry did not look at him. He had a fleeting impression that Seamus had opened his mouth to speak but sped up, reaching the soothing silence of the stone spiral staircase without having to endure any more provocation.

"D'you think he'll ever get sick of making fun of me?" he asked Ron, glumly.

"He'll see, Harry. Eventually," said Ron, but even he did not sound very hopeful.

As Harry walked into the dormitory and said his goodnights to Ron and Neville—who in turn was crooning "Goodnight" to his plants—he sank into his bed, trying not to wince as his head throbbed terribly and yet all he could think about was whether Cedric had noticed his absence during dinner.

Did he have to endure the same ridiculing as well?

The whispers had grown bolder in the last twelve hours.

And lot less friendly.

Harry flinched as pain piled at the front of his forehead.

Go to sleep, he thought, and he clenched his teeth, go to sleep and we can see him tomorrow—go to sleep and we can see him tomorrow—go to sleep… go to sleep…

Harry turned in bed, pressing his pillow around his head like a bandage and repeating the thought over and over and over, until, he could think no more.


The next day, as soon as he woke, Harry threw his robes over his body and rushed downstairs; dodging Seamus a second time and running to the common room where to his dismay—Harry found his friends in the beginnings of a row.

"You took the rubbish off the hats?!" Hermione demanded, her eyes flared over her knitted garments which lay, untouched on the table.

"Only because of all people, you shouldn't be making choices for the elves! And like hell they were hats! They looked more like woolly bladders!" Ron replied cuttingly. But before Hermione could make a scathing reply, Harry forced his head down and escaped to the Grand Staircase, trudging toward the Great Hall by himself.

From the sunbeams that illuminated the castle's moving stairways, it looked like another grand autumn day as the painted figures in their hung portraits danced and whirled through their frames, as though fallen leaves propelled by short bursts of gust. Some of the trees in the paintings had actually shed and browned golden while high-rising above, around about the castles seventh and sixth floor, some ghosts drifted through the walls with scarves wrapped around their necks.

It was a less whimsical experience on the ground however as Harry ignored the gawkers that followed him down, pushing through crowds and the giggles that disappeared around corners as he skipped four steps to two down the Grand Staircase.

One particular group of sixth-years loitering by the entrance hall erupted with snide laughter when he passed, an unmistakable flash of sickly green badges and patches glinting from the front of their robes. But—like he wasn't bothered at all that 'POTTER STINKS' had made its way back through school—Harry kept his eyes glued forward, playing deaf to their nasal voices as they echoed around him and forcing himself to go straight to the Great Hall; he had just reached the giant arched doorway when a much kinder voice rang out from behind him, "Hey, Harry!"

It was Cho, waving at him; her hair longer, her skin tanner that it had been before summer. And while Harry grinned and waved back at her, he felt his stomach drop from a familiar sensation of disappointment, it was only Cho and despite it everything that was simply—wait.

What?

Cho walked up to him, radiant eyes pushing into crescents, "Hi Harry!"

Harry blinked, and the pit in his stomach disappeared.

This was an incredible off-day.

"Hi Cho," he said, trying to muster up another smile. At least I'm not covered in Stinksap this time!

Cho seemed to be thinking along the same lines, "You got that stuff off, then?"

"Yeah," said Harry suddenly grinning with more ease, as though the memory of their last meeting was actually funny as opposed to mortifying. "How are you?"

"Oh, I'm good! Slowly getting back into the routine and all that, you know," Cho said, smiling prettily. Harry nodded, he craned his neck and was surprised to find that none of her friends were waiting behind or sitting down at a table and staring at them.

It was odd that she was on her own again; last year she had been almost always surrounded by a gang of girls giggling around her and Harry could almost feel the old agony of trying to get her by herself to ask her to the Yule Ball.

Absent-mindedly, he began to gesture and talk, "So did you… er… have a good summer?" he said, but in that instant, he wished he hadn't: something seemed to tauten in Cho's smile and, Harry suddenly recalled the face she made when she saw Cedric in their carriage.

"Oh, it was all right, you know, but… Cedric and I—he must've told you—we broke up during the summer," she said.

Rat brains.

"Oh, I… sorry! Erm, I'm sorry, I didn't know. And.. sorry that, erm, it didn't work out…" said Harry, awkwardly. He was acutely aware that he had said sorry one too many times, and it surely sounded a little stupid.

"Did he not tell you?" she asked.

"Sort-of? I didn't want to ask really…" It was a meek kind-of lie but in truth there were many things that Harry wanted to ask—What happened? Who broke up with who, why— but he realized that he wasn't too eager to hear any of those answers in this moment. And while he fidgeted for something else to say, Cho piped up, "Listen whatever Cedric might've said, it doesn't mean—"

"He didn't say anything." Harry said, immediately. "We don't, erm, we don't talk about those kinds of things so you don't have to worry,"

"Oh! Well I meant if he said anything bad… I know that he wouldn't, but just in case…"

"Yeah, he wouldn't—and he didn't," Harry added, eyes momentarily drawn away by a familiar head of curls sitting at the end of a table. It was the boy that Cedric had been laughing with yesterday; he was alone. "He's had some rough days, but… I think he's doing okay for now."

"Right well… I'm glad you're looking good, Harry," Cho said, her voice thinning in a way that snapped Harry alert, "Take care of yourself… and of Cedric."

Automatically, Harry looked to her; feeling guilty.

"Erm, it's good seeing you Cho… you take care too," he said. She waved and walked away, and Harry groaned under his breath— What are you doing? came his nagging fourteen-year old voice, she was worried about you!

I know, he told himself, I know.

But he could feel a pendulum swing, ticking at the back of his head.
There was something more pressing at hand, and he didn't have time for this, he needs to find Cedric and so hurriedly—pressing down the questions to save for later—Harry walked to the end of the Hufflepuff table and tapped the curly-haired boy on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, hello! Sorry, my name is—"

"Harry Potter!" the boy looked to him with wide eyes, standing up so suddenly that Harry took an instinctive step back,

"Er—"

"Hidiyah look, Harry Potter's here!"

"And what would Harry Potter be wanting to do with you, hm?" said a girl, her head suddenly popping from behind.

"He's looking for Cedric—you're looking for Cedric, right?" the boy said, nodding eagerly back. Harry could not respond as his brain-circuited in surprise over how this gargantuan boy seemed to towered over everyone else in the Great Hall.

"Mate, I think you're scaring him,"

"Oh rot, sorry, I keep forgetting…" the tall boy backed away.

"It's alright—! Erm, I don't mean to be rude," said Harry.

"Don't fret," said the girl, she tugged at the tall boy's sleeve, "Everyone's always wary during the first time—the way he acts, you'd think he's actually been raised by wolves or at least some very excitable puppies—"

"Hush Hidiyah," the tall boy chided, and Harry briefly recollected that name on one of the letters Cedric sent at Grimmauld.

"You're Hidiyah?"

"That's me. And this is—"

"Right!" the tall boy said, sticking a hand out. Hidiyah gave a large sigh.

"You're... Right?" said Harry, uncertainly.

"Yeah," he grinned, "I'm Evan Wright!"

From the way Hidiyah had buried her face into her hand, Harry felt as though he had just become a victim to a long-running joke.

"Nice to meet you," he said, and to Evan's delight, they shook hands.

Evan Wright stuck out like a sore thumb in the midst of the Great Hall.

You would have to be extraordinarily resistant to school gossip (and admittedly, Harry often was) to not know about Hufflepuff's rumoured 'gentle giant', though Evan only reached around six foot and eight inches in height which was tiny; compared to that of Hagrid or Madame Maxine.

With warm dark skin, coiled hair and soft smile; Evan looked like he either belonged to fairytale picture books with lots of soft, hand-painted furry animals or one of Sirius's Muggle epics that depicted all sorts of gods and demigod heroes alike. However, with the grip of Evan's hand clamping down on his own; Harry felt as though he had confirmed the latter as a fact when he felt his hand crumple from a very sudden squeeze—

"OW!"

"Oh Merlin's baggy fronts, Evan!" said Hidiyah, leaping up.

"Sorry! I always forget to not squeeze—!" Evan let go and began to trace a finger in the air, leaving lines of light that trailed behind, vivid, static; and drawing what looked very much like a rune.

Under his breath Evan muttered, "Enfizo!" and the lines gleamed; thin tendrils of vine spread like veins on Harry's hand, blooming with small white flowers that faded just as quickly as they were conjured, his pain falling away with them.

"Oh!" Harry breathed. He flexed his fingers, relieved. "Thank you!"

"Are your fingers in all of their sockets?" asked Hidiyah, bending over slightly.

"I didn't squeeze that hard," Evan said, mildly offended. "Fingers don't even belong in sockets."

"Just making sure, Ev,"

Harry tried not to think about having possessed briefly broken fingers and turned to her, "It's fine, he didn't... err... it's fine. You're Hidiyah?"

"Hidiyah Khan," she said, lifting her hand out without looking away from Harry's hand, "Don't worry. No jokes or enough of a strength to make you feel worse,"

Harry awkwardly shook her hand with his left, and said, "It's nice to meet you."

He had not heard of Hidiyah Khan before this moment but if he had to hazard a guess, she probably preferred it that way. There was something about the way she moved that reminded Harry of water, deep water; immensity and vastness that only seemed 'empty' in theory. She was much smaller than Evan, bronze-skinned and with intelligent eyes that seemed to cut you open, her wide, pretty face scuffed by a small scar on her lip and what looked like green paint and patches of dirt on her cheeks. Wrapped around her head was a scarf the colour of deep gold and her fingers, Harry noted, held many criss-crossing white marks that trailed down to the curve of her palms.

"Neville's told me a lot about you from club and… oh, you're friends with Luna, too?" she said suddenly, her attention pointed toward his chest.

"Er—" Harry looked down where Hermione's upgraded S.P.E.W badge lay pinned to his robes— "..Yes?"

"Well then!" Hidiyah said, giving him an unexpected grin, "If you're looking for Cedric, he's still in the dorms but we can go and get him if you'd like—"

Brring!

"—Or not."

Harry's heart sank as the sound of benches that screeched backward and chatter, surged around him.

"Rot, we still have to wake him up for class," said Evan, exasperatedly. Hidiyah ducked while he swung his bag across his shoulder, but Harry—who did not expect it—only felt a breeze brush just above the strays of his hair before realizing he was lucky not be lying eagle-spread on the floor.

"We'll tell Ced you were looking for him," Hidiyah said helpfully. Harry nodded.

"Thanks. It was really nice meeting you both," he said and he walked away, trying his best to not show the hunger or disappoint on his face.


As the day went on, frustration crept into Harry's fingers that fumbled and stiffened. He plodded through Charms and Transfiguration, struggling so much in Summoning and Vanishing objects that there wasn't a chance to even relish the absence of their regular Potions class.

Harry also began to get sick of his own name.

Every year above—including some particularly brave fourth and third-years—had begun to make a gimmick of shouting it at him like it was some bizarre, new rude word. It was possible that before fourth period was up, he had heard "Pottah Stinks!" more than a dozen times in all manners of voices that belonged to strangers, gossips and everything in between.
He almost missed the previous poor attempts of subtlety; at least those left some space for him to feign ignorance. Now people just laughed loudly, even when Harry turned to stare at them venomously back.

"They're awful," Hermione said. She turned to her left and right, shooting glares just above each of Harry's shoulders.

"It's not too different from last year," Harry placed his hands on her shoulders and straightened her up as they walked forward.

"What are you talking about, they're acting like mongrels," Hermione glanced at him uneasily, "Do you think Cedric's handling it well?"

Harry sighed, "I haven't got a clue, Hermione."

When he swung by the hall for lunch, Harry caught neither Cedric's figure nor his laughter near the Hufflepuff table, in fact; he could not seem to find him anywhere in the castle, no matter how hard he looked, to and from all his classes. In the afternoon he followed Ron and Hermione to Care of Magical Creatures—the two maintaining a thirty-foot, diagonal distance since their argument in the morning—where it suddenly occurred to him that he had never thought to even ask Cedric about his subjects at Hogwarts or any of his interests in all the time they'd spent together during the summer and promptly—Harry's head started aching again.

His mood did not improve when he saw Professor Grubbly-Plank waiting for the class ten yards away Hagrid's front door, a long trestle table in front of her laden with many twigs, and it soured even further when she could not answer his question to Hagrid's whereabouts.

"You must know where he is, you've repla—substituted him!" Harry said.

"Never you mind," said Professor Grubbly-Plank repressively, which had been her attitude last time Hagrid had failed to turn up for a class too. She turned away while Harry sighed.

With a smirk spread all over his pointed face, Draco Malfoy sauntered past him, "Maybe, the stupid great oaf's got himself badly injured," he said in an undertone.

"Maybe you will, if you don't shut up," said Harry out of the side of his mouth.

"Maybe he's been messing with stuff that's too big for him, if you get my drift," Malfoy said and he walked away, smirking over his shoulder at Harry, who then spent the entire lesson trying not to think about Cedric, Hagrid or how he suddenly felt very sick.

For his effort, he was rewarded when Hermione and Ron seemingly came to a truce to listen to his worries, though Professor Grubbly-Plank's twig—a creature called a Bowtruckle as he later found out—cut his hand twice and quickly dissipated any of the positivity he had allowed himself to feel in that moment.

When distantly over the grounds, the bell echoed; Harry marched off to Herbology with his hand wrapped in a handkerchief of Hermione's and Malfoy's derisive laughter still ringing in his ears.

"If he calls Hagrid a moron one more time…" snarled Harry.

"Harry, don't go picking fights with Malfoy, he's a prefect now." Hermione whispered, "He could make life difficult for you…"

"Wow, I wonder what it'd be like to have a difficult life?" said Harry sarcastically. Ron laughed, but Hermione only frowned as together, they traipsed across the vegetable patch, the sky above them unable to make up its mind whether it wanted to rain or not.

"I just wish Hagrid would hurry up and get back, that's all," said Harry in a low voice, as they reached the greenhouses. "And don't say that Grubbly-Plank woman's a better teacher!" he added threateningly.

"I wasn't going to," said Hermione calmly.

"Because she'll never be as good as Hagrid," said Harry firmly, fully aware that even though he had been cut and his mind occupied for most of the hour, he had just experienced an exemplary Care of Magical Creatures lesson and was thoroughly annoyed about it.

They waited as the door of the nearest greenhouse opened and some fourth years spilled out of it, including Ginny.

"Hi guys!" she said brightly as she passed. Beside her Luna Lovegood emerged, a smudge of earth on her nose and her hair tied in a knot on the top of her head. When she saw Harry, her prominent eyes seemed to bulge excitedly, and she made a beeline straight for him. Many of his classmates turned curiously to watch as Luna took a great breath and then said, without so much as a preliminary hello: "I believe He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back, and I believe you fought him and escaped from him."

"Er—right," said Harry awkwardly. Luna was wearing what looked like a pair of orange radishes for earrings, a fact that Parvati and Lavender seemed to have noticed, as they were both giggling and pointing at her earlobes.

"You can laugh!" Luna said, her voice rising, apparently under the impression that Parvati and Lavender were laughing at what she had said rather than what she was wearing.

"But people used to believe there were no such things as the Blibbering Humdinger or the Crumple-Horned Snorkack!"

"Well, they were right, weren't they?" said Hermione patiently. "There weren't any such things as the Blibbering Humdinger or the Crumple-Horned Snorkack."

Luna gave her a wink and flounced away, radishes swinging madly. Parvati and Lavender were not the only ones hooting with laughter now, though a sharp look from Ginny shut most of them up. Ernie Macmillan then stepped up to them, with slightly puffed up chest.

"I want you to know, Potter," he said in a loud, carrying voice, "that it's not only weirdos who support you. I personally believe you one hundred percent. My family have always stood firm behind Dumbledore, and so do I."

"Er—thanks very much, Ernie," said Harry, taken aback but pleased. Ernie might be pompous on occasions like these, but Harry was in a mood to deeply appreciate a vote of confidence from somebody who was not wearing radishes in their ears (though he supposed, those were welcome too).

Ernie's words had certainly wiped the lingering smile from Lavender Brown's face and as he turned to talk to Ron and Hermione, Harry caught Seamus's expression flicker as well, from confusion to defiance. They continued onto to their Herbology lesson, where to nobody's surprise, Professor Sprout started their lesson by lecturing them about the importance of O. .
Harry began to get an anxious, twisted feeling in his stomach every time he remembered how much homework he had to do, a feeling that worsened dramatically when Professor Sprout gave them yet another essay at the end of class. So tired and smelling strongly of dragon dung—Professor Sprout's preferred brand of fertilizer—the Gryffindors trooped back up to the castle, none of them talking very much; it had been another long day.

Stomachs rumbling, they headed straight for the Great Hall to scoff something down, while Harry wrestled with the thought of his first detention with Umbridge well on his mind. He had barely sat down at the table, however, when a loud and angry voice said, "Oy, Potter!"

"What now?" he muttered wearily, turning to face Angelina Johnson, who looked as though she was in a towering temper. Oh shi—

"I'll tell you 'what now'!" she said, marching straight up to him and poking him hard in the chest with her finger. "How come you've landed yourself in detention for five o'clock on Friday?"

Harry blinked once, twice before very slowly, he closed his eyes and sank his face against his palm, "Right. Keeper try-outs." he said.

"Now he remembers!" snarled Angelina. "Didn't I tell you I wanted to do a try-out with the whole team, and find someone who fitted in with everyone? Didn't I tell you I'd booked the Quidditch pitch specially? And now you've decided you're not going to be there!"

"I didn't 'decide' not to be there!" said Harry, stung by the injustice of these words. "I got detention from that Umbridge woman, just because I told her the truth about You-Know-Who—"

"Well, you can just go straight to her and ask her to let you off on Friday," said Angelina fiercely, "And I don't care how you do it, tell her You-Know-Who's a figment of your imagination if you like, just make sure you're there!"

She then stormed away, leaving Harry, Hermione and Ron stunned at the table.

"Did… Did Oliver Wood die and possess her body?" Ron asked, a mix of awe and fear.

"Do you think Umbridge would even let you go on Friday, if you asked?" said Hermione.

"Probably not," Harry said grimly, "I'm just hoping she doesn't keep me too long this evening. You realize we've got to write three essays, practice Vanishing Spells for McGonagall, work out a countercharm for Flitwick, finish the Bowtruckle drawing and start that stupid dream diary for Trelawney?"

Ron groaned and for some reason glanced up at the ceiling, "And it looks like it's going to rain."

"What's that got to do with our homework?" said Hermione, her eyebrows raised.

"Nothing," said Ron at once, his ears reddening. He turned to Harry and changed the topic, "But what'll you do? Are you going to ask her to let you off?"

Harry shoved a spoonful of mashed potato in his mouth and stood up.

"The scar on my head would sooner disappear," he said with a grimace. It was five til five.


Soft meows of a thousand hung pictures and paintings of cats filled the silence as Harry sat awkwardly in Umbridge's office, which had been painted pink and filled with cheap, gaudy furniture that stank of mildew and age. He hated that he could no longer see Lupin anywhere.

"You haven't given me any ink," he said, staring at the black quill in his hand. It was bewildering that he had only been given lines as punishment for their shouting match the other day.

"Oh, you won't need ink," said Professor Umbridge with the merest suggestion of a laugh in her voice. Harry felt something curdle inside his stomach.

It was bewildering that it was only lines. But Umbridge's pleasant demeanor, as if she knew a secret that he didn't, unsettled him—it felt like a hint to a bigger picture that he had yet to perceive.

Reluctantly Harry placed the point of the quill on the sheet of parchment in front of him and wrote: I must not tell lies.

At first nothing happened. There was no ink in the quill so the parchment was only indented with the stroke of his words, and Harry couldn't understand. Did she think writing without ink would drive him mad? Would he go mad if he did it enough times?

But then, something stabbed at his hand, and Harry let out a gasp of pain.

The sentence had appeared on the page in what appeared to be shining red ink, and horrifically, on the back of Harry's right hand; piercing and cut right into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel. He watched, breathing heavily, as the skin healed over again, leaving the place where it had been slightly redder than before but quite smooth. As quickly as Harry sat straight in shock and gasped, he bent over the desk, clenching the quill at his hand again. From behind, he already knew that Umbridge was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth probably stretched into a smile.

"Did you say something, dear?"

"Nothing," said Harry quietly. He looked back at the parchment and placed the quill upon it once more, wrote I must not tell lies, and felt the searing pain on the back of his hand for a second time; reaffirming that the words had been cut into his skin before once again they healed over seconds later.

Again and again Harry wrote the words on the parchment in what he soon came to realize was not ink, but his own blood. And again and again the words were cut into the back of his hand, healed, and then reappeared the next time he set quill to parchment; I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies.

Each stroke, each cut felt like an added degree to his temper; like an added storm cloud or skewer that Umbridge had personally screwed into his palm. But Harry clutched at the quill like nothing else and bit down the insides of his mouth so hard until they too, were too bleeding like his hand and he continued to write; I must not tell lies. I must not tell lies.

I Must. Not. Tell. Lies.

Darkness fell outside Umbridge's window. Harry did not ask when he would be allowed to stop.

He did not even check his watch or pause longer than moving the paper up to write a new line.

He knew she was watching him for signs of weakness, and he was not going to show any, not even if he had to sit here all night, cutting open his own hand with this quill with nothing to show for it except the ghost of the pain and the memory of the searing and the hatred that coiled tense around his head.

"Come here," she said, after what seemed hours. Harry stood up, his ears suddenly open to the flow of sound, of purring and meowing and a grandfather clock that had been held at bay by his concentration. His hand hurt. The cut had healed but his skin looked stung red and raw, and it felt like he was still cutting into his hand, tracing I must not lie even though he had left the quill on the desk.

"Hand," she said. He extended it. She took it in her own. Harry repressed a shudder as she touched him with her thick, stubby fingers on which she wore a number of ugly, old rings.

"Tut, tut, I don't seem to have made much of an impression yet," she said, smiling. "Well, we'll just have to try again tomorrow evening, won't we? You may go. Keep the papers you've written on."

Harry grabbed his bag, the papers, and left her office without a word. The school was quite deserted; it was surely past midnight. He walked slowly through the castle and then, when he was quite surely several hallways and rooms away where she would not hear him, he screamed into the inside of his bag and ripped the blood-inked papers into shreds.