The next day, Tuesday, Harry was refreshed and eager to go back to regular classes. His teachers had only been told by Dumbledore that Harry was taking one day off to recover from an ailment- what the Headmaster left out was that the ailment was mental.
In Divination, the first class of the day, Professor Trelawney had a very smug look behind her thick glasses. "I have been conversing with the Fates," she proclaimed. "They have informed me that their prediction from September, the time when Jupiter crossed Saturn, still stands true. One person present at this time will not finish the school year," she said, and gazed dolefully at Harry. And on the off chance that Harry had not caught her meaning, she added, "And sudden illness often forms the vanguard of the powerful swath of Death." Lavender and Parvati gasped, but they were the only ones in the room not wearing skeptical looks.
"Honestly, if Voldemort really does kill me before the year's out, she'll be the happiest person at my funeral," Harry said crossly to Ron as they slid down the ladder from the Divination classroom.
"Don't say things like that," Ron said, shuddering. "I can't imagine that you'd respect her enough to invite her to your funeral. Come on though, we have to pick up Hermione from the Arithmancy classroom and get to Potions."
"I thought you and Hermione weren't speaking," Harry said slyly as they hurried down the hall and through a tapestry to a shortcut staircase.
"We buried the hatchet," Ron said, stepping over the vanishing step that always went missing on Tuesdays.
"Did you kiss and make up?" Harry teased, hopping the vanishing step. Seeing the warning look in Ron's eyes, he hastily amended, "I mean, er, good for you."
Snape was particularly wrathful in Potions. During the month of January, the quality of Harry Potter's work had been waning, and the boy himself had been starting to look a bit weary, and Severus Snape had been certain that he was winning; but after one day of missing lessons, Potter was back looking fresh as a daisy and the make-up assignments he had handed in had been thorough and nearly faultless. And the Headmaster had made it clear that all work submitted by Potter on Monday was to be accepted and recorded in place of the original marks. Snape was sour. He knew Potter's poorly appearance had been somehow Voldemort-related; but neither Voldemort nor Dumbledore said anything to Snape. He had gone from being a double agent to- nothing. He meant nothing to anyone, not to the Death Eaters, not to the Order of the Phoenix.
But Snape had, unfortunately, learned something. Harry Potter was important to Dumbledore. Would the old wizard have given time off to any other student or faculty member? Dumbledore liked the little brat, Snape knew. It was one weakness of Dumbledore's- and it was dangerous for Snape to know this, because Voldemort could contact him at any time and request an update on anything Snape had learned about Dumbledore. Snape had no desire to double-cross Dumbledore, but Voldemort's loyal servant Maldora Lestrange could brew a very potent Veritaserum to force the truth from Snape. Maldora learned from the best, Snape thought. From the same teacher as I did- her mother.
His worries about Dumbledore did not make him more acerbic than usual, but his insults were better. "Your Delusory Dram was perfect, Potter," he snarled during class. "But don't ingest any yourself. It may give you delusions of adequacy."
Malfoy sniggered. Harry wished he had the courage to turn round and curse Malfoy's smirk off his ugly face. He remembered Niamh Giffard's gift to him- the one word that could besmirch the proud Malfoy family name. At moments like this he wanted to jump up and point at Malfoy and shout, "Vampire!" But the time for revenge will come, he told himself.
Herbology was next. In the grey sunlight filtering through the glass panes of greenhouse four, Harry peered closely at Hermione. "What happened to your hair?"
Hermione frowned and self-consciously patted her head, where the missing patch of hair that currently resided inside a Man-Eating Fangwort had been. Ron grinned.
"Everyone back outside," called Professor Sprout as she bustled, clutching a bulging burlap sack tightly to her chest. "There's not enough room for this lesson in the greenhouse."
Mystified and excited, the students filed outside again. The snow still lay across the grounds, but a large square area had been cleared and thawed. In the square the soil was dry and brown. The students all crowded round the square and watched Professor Sprout carefully put down her sack in the centre of the square.
"Up to now we've been learning about the magical plants and herbs that were well-known and widespread across the globe. But it's also important to keep up with breakthroughs in the field of Herbology and the current research of botanowizards.
"A few months ago the British witch Phyllida Spore announced the discovery of a new species of magical vine in Caballococha in the Amazon Basin of South America. Phyllida Spore is world-renowned Herbology expert and author of several books including the textbooks we use at Hogwarts. She is a Hogwarts alum, actually, she and I were good friends at school here." While Professor Sprout smiled to herself, probably reminiscing, Hermione nudged Harry.
"Is that Professor Figg's daughter?" she whispered. Harry nodded, and almost added, "One of them," before he remembered that Ron and Hermione didn't know that Maldora Lestrange was Solange Figg.
Professor Sprout was talking again. "Her tests have proved that this vine can grow in most climates, from tropical jungles to deserts to winter landscapes like we have now. The only thing it needs to grow is soft earth.
"Its natural function is still somewhat unclear. All that is known is that it grows to extraordinarily heights in very little time. It grows at such an incredible rate, in fact, that Phyllida Spore has named it the Mile-A-Minute vine."
Dean Thomas raised his hand. "Now when you say mile, you don't actually mean..."
"No, of course not literally." Professor Sprout chuckled. "But it can reach almost 100 metres in 60 seconds after being sown."
"Is that bag full of Mile-A-Minute seeds, then?" Hermione asked, pointing at the burlap sack.
"Vine-pods, yes." From the bag Professor Sprout extracted one vine-pod.
"That's just a bean," said Ernie Macmillan disappointedly. It did indeed look quite mundane, a small pale purple object about the size and shape of a kidney bean.
"So it may seem," said Professor Sprout. She zapped the brown soil to dig a hole and held the vine-pod over it. "When you plant these things you'll need your wand in your hand, to stop the growth. And you'll want to stand quite far back or it will take your arm off as it shoots up. Careful now!"
She dropped the pod and leaped back, pointing her wand at the hole in the ground. For a moment nothing happened. Then there was a rumbling and a green stalk, almost as thick round as Harry's torso, erupted from the hole and raced up towards the grey skies. As it shot up, large flat leaves uncurled from the stem and spangled out on all sides.
"Stirpoterminus!" shouted Professor Sprout, and the great vine froze in its upsurge.
Harry shielded his eyes and squinted at the towering vine, which stood tall and strong despite the near-freezing temperature. Beside him Ron whistled. "That must have been almost a hundred feet straight up!"
"Mathematically, it grows about 5 feet every second," said Professor Sprout. "Since I called out the Pruning Spell after thirty seconds, it's about a hundred and fifty feet high. Despite its flimsy appearance, the Mile-A-Minute vine is quite sturdy and good for climbing." She demonstrated by scaling the vine, using the fat stems of the leaves that flourished on the sides of the vine as hand- and footholds.
When she came back down she took more bean-like vine-pods from the burlap sack. "Now you may try. But be careful not to drop them, because you saw how fast they grow. Everyone draw your wands! Practise the Pruning Spell. Repeat three times after me: Stirpoterminus!"
"Stirpoterminus, Stirpoterminus, Stirpoterminus," Harry said with the others.
"Good! And I hope you can all count to three, because that is the length of time you may let the Mile-A-Minute grow. In pairs now, come get one vine-pod each. Each partner watch that the other's vine doesn't grow too high."
With Ron and Hermione already a pair, Harry elected to team up with Neville Longbottom, who was quite good at Herbology. "You try it first," he said to Neville.
Neville shrugged. He fired a hole in the ground and planted his vine-pod so perfectly that it hit exactly fifteen feet in height. Neville happily climbed his Mile-A-Minute vine. "Now you try," he called down to Harry.
Harry nervously magicked a hole for his vine-pod. He had never been very good at Herbology- what if this didn't go well?
"It's easy," Neville called, as if he were reading Harry's mind. "Just drop it in and shout Stirpoterminus after three seconds."
Harry let go of the vine-pod and leaped back. One, two, three...
"Now, Harry, now!" Neville said in alarm, seeing Harry's vine shoot up past his face.
"Stirpoterminus!" Harry cried, and his vine froze.
"Eighteen feet," said Ron from the top of his eleven-foot-high vine nearby. "Rotten luck, Harry. Counting over is worse than counting under. What's wrong, forgotten how to count to three?"
"Yesterday she said this was going to be on the O.W.L.'s?" Harry asked, scaling his vine. It really was very sturdy, though it was only about Harry's girth, and the leaves grew out on all sides in convenient places for handholds.
"Yes, Mr. Potter, this may be covered on the O.W.L.'s," Professor Sprout called up from the base of his vine. "The Herbology O.W.L. is half practical skills and half essay writing. Since students who take the O.W.L.'s are expected to keep up with the news, some essay questions may deal with current events in the field of Herbology- including the discovery of new magical plant species."
"How could a vine this monstrous have only just been discovered?" said Hufflepuff Justin Finch-Fletchley.
"It's a magic plant, Finch-Fletchley, it has camouflaging devices of its own. But something like it was mentioned in a Muggle fairy tale once, Jack and the Beanstalk."
"But that story was probably set in Europe," said Hermione. "How did the Mile-A-Minute vine emigrate to the Amazon Basin?"
Professor Sprout shrugged mysteriously. "It's not certain yet... but wouldn't that be a marvellous O.W.L. essay question?" She winked and strolled away.
"Now on top of everything we have to read Muggle fairy tales to research for the O.W.L.'s," Ron grumbled. "And what possible use could these ridiculous vines have in nature anyway?"
"Lookout towers?" suggested Harry.
"Television antennas for the jungle animals," said Hermione.
"What are television antennas?" asked Ron, astonished.
Elsewhere in the area Albus Dumbledore, Fletch, and a young wizard named Gideon Crumb, whose bagpipe-playing in the popular band the Weird Sisters covered up his being a member of the Order of the Phoenix, were also having an animated discussion.
"But I think Bella's right," Albus said. "Isn't it possible that Voldemort still wants to conceal himself from the public eye?"
"To what end?" asked Fletch. "What possible reason could he have for continuing to hide himself away, and in a place so perilous to his privacy as Bella suggests? He's powerful enough to come out now, that much is obvious from what Snape tells us. What is he still biding his time for? You remember Perdita said yesterday that he may be wearying of the gruesome lifestyle he has. Maybe he really is tired of killing, and he subconsciously wants to be caught."
"Let us speculate for a moment that Bella's theory is correct," Dumbledore said. "Let's suppose that Voldemort is living in some sort of cave somewhere with an entrance that leads to a public area for Muggles or wizards. Where could this entrance be, that he could leave it every night without being seen?"
"London?" said Crumb. "Diagon Alley, or Knockturn Alley, or even Muggle London. One of those rookeries like where Bella said the Lestranges lived." He perked up. "Perhaps it is that rookery where they lived. His lair might be in that sort of neighbourhood. They're usually dark and dingy and full of burglars and brothels and crime. No one notices if people are murdered in those bad neighbourhoods. They just think it was a bar brawl or a couple of drifters fighting."
"It's crawling with Muggles," Albus countered. "He couldn't go unnoticed among Muggles for so long. And even if he could, what would stop him from coming out during the day? No, he can't be in any Muggle London district."
"Well then what about Diagon Alley?" said Crumb. "It gets nice and empty after dark, doesn't it?"
Fletch shook his head. "The Ministry offices are right there near Gringotts Bank. Voldemort and his Death Eaters could never pass up an opportunity for wreaking havoc in the Ministry building. And besides, the point of having the only gate to Diagon Alley come from the Leaky Cauldron was just so that we could monitor who came and went. There is only the one entrance-"
"-that we know of," interrupted Crumb. "But look at Hogwarts, it's full of secret passageways and hidden alcoves and moving staircases. Why couldn't Diagon Alley be like that?"
"Because Hogwarts was built over a thousand years ago, and no one left us the blueprints," Albus answered. "But Diagon Alley was built to exact standards, to have precisely one entryway and no secret passages at all. It has always been necessary to keep lost or curious Muggles out of the world of magic. Now we use those measures to keep out Muggles and enemies."
"Then what about Hogsmeade?" said Crumb. "It's right by the school. Wouldn't it be a rather convenient place for Voldemort to hide out? Sirius Black said he lived in hiding in Hogsmeade for a few months. Couldn't Voldemort do the same?"
"But we searched Hogsmeade," said Fletch. "After the dragon attack, we combed the ruins of the village end to end. With a magical map that Bella stole from Harry Potter, we found a few secret entranceways to Hogwarts, but those were the only passages leading from somewhere to Hogsmeade."
"Then couldn't the Death Eaters have been using them?" asked Crumb.
"No, they didn't seem to have been used since Harry went through them two years ago. We barricaded them magically anyways, and Albus set up magic traps and security alarm spells at each secret entrance, but the pranks continued. The Death Eaters are still getting inside Hogwarts somehow."
"What if they really don't have to get in?" said Crumb, undaunted by the rejections of all his previous theories. He was younger than Perdita Clemens but just as eager to help and bursting with ideas and questions. "What if, like Bartemius Crouch, Jr. from last year, there is a Death Eater hidden inside Hogwarts at this moment?"
"Bella and I searched the place at Christmas," Fletch said.
"But Crouch was able to Polyjuice himself to look like Mad-Eye Moody," Crumb argued. "They might think it's a tried-and-true method, like when they switched the prisoners for live Muggles at Azkaban."
"Even if it were possible for them to execute the same audacious plan twice under my very nose," said Albus, "the Death Eater should already have captured Harry Potter and delivered him to Voldemort. He or she wouldn't be wasting time flooding classrooms and enchanting greenhouse plants and spreading Bundimun secretion on walls."
"I beg your pardon?" said Crumb, puzzled. He had been touring Asia with the Weird Sisters for the last four months, and had had to be filled in on everything when he returned to Britain two days before. "You didn't tell me about that."
Dumbledore explained to Crumb about the first pranks and the Dark Mark in the sky above the castle. Crumb shivered. "How appalling! The students weren't harmed, were they?"
"Only shocked," said Albus, frowning. "And we're still repairing the Charms classroom that collapsed. The Death Eaters somehow poured Bundimun secretion right at the foundations and rotted them away. We had to relocate poor Professor Flitwick to the fifth floor, and all the Charms students have to trek to the opposite end of the school for class. But clearly they haven't kidnapped Harry yet because they can't get to him."
"Say, Albus," Fletch said, sitting forward. "Didn't you say you met with the board of trustees about having a little gypsy witch at Hogwarts?"
"Yes," Albus said. "Niamh is the latest of the ancient Irish Giffard gypsy line."
"The vatical kind?" asked Crumb, interested. "As in prophecies and all that?"
"No, she is clairvoyant. She can read minds and have visions like the dreams that Harry has."
"But clairvoyance is enough," said Fletch. "Problem solved! This Giffard girl can just tell us where Voldemort is hiding. No fuss, no muss."
"I had thought of that," admitted Dumbledore. "But I would have used it as a last resort. She's still very young. There's no telling how she would react to the request."
Then there was a knock on the door. The three wizards looked at each other in surprise; they had not been expecting more company. "Come in," Dumbledore said.
The door swung open to reveal a small student with an apologetic look on her face. "Professor Dumbledore, I'm very sorry to intrude," said Niamh Giffard, determinedly stepping into the room. "I heard your conversation in my head- not all of it, just the part where you started talking about me," she added, seeing Fletch and Crumb's shock. "And I had to come see you. I'm sorry but I read the password in your head, Professor."
Fletch recovered quickly. "Then you can read minds? Can you read Voldemort's?"
Niamh Giffard shuddered at the name. "No, that's exactly what I came to tell you. Human thoughts are what pass through my mind. You-Know-Who's not human enough for me to hear him."
"In other words, he's beyond your reach?" Crumb said in disappointment.
"I simply can't read You-Know-Who," Niamh said, looking imploringly from one wizard to the other. "It's just too- black inside him. I can't read his thoughts or see what he's doing. My powers can't stretch that much."
"It's all right, Niamh," Dumbledore said soothingly. "We trust your judgment of your capabilities. No one is forcing you to do anything."
"You couldn't even just have a little look at a map and try to point out his hiding place, could you?" Crumb asked.
"Gideon," Dumbledore said warningly.
"I really am sorry," Niamh said to Crumb. "It's not possible. He's not human enough."
"We understand," Fletch said kindly to Niamh. "But my dear, you must remember not to say anything about this to anyone. Not a word."
"I promise to keep my mouth shut," Niamh said. "I won't even think about it. But if you still want to pursue the oracular arts for your answers, you could ask Professor Trelawney. She seems to think she can read things in her crystal ball." Niamh's tone barely hid her scorn for the Divination teacher.
Before leaving Niamh paused and whispered something into Dumbledore's ear. After her departure the Phoenixes sat down again. "We seem to be back to square one," said Fletch.
"I can't help but feel as if we're wasting our time sitting here discussing," Crumb said. "I know that Perdita agrees with me. Why aren't we out there actively searching for Voldemort?"
"A minute of thinking is worth ten minutes of searching," Albus said sagely.
"And if you and Perdita want to go round the whole castle with a magnifying glass like Bella and I already have, you can be my guest," Fletch said sarcastically to Crumb.
"Maybe we will," Crumb said huffily, standing up.
"Fine, go ahead!" Fletch said, standing as well. "But watch yourself on that third-floor staircase with the vanishing step and also keep an eye out for that rascal Peeves. And don't miss off interviewing the portraits, they really loved that. Especially that mad knight Sir Cadogan, he's really a scream."
"Fletcher, Gideon, sit down," Dumbledore said severely. "I know that today's discussion has been less than satisfactory in terms of getting answers to our problems, but we are making progress. We've already ruled out several possible hiding places for Voldemort, just by talking about them," he added pointedly for Crumb's benefit.
"Sorry, Albus," said Crumb. "Wait! I've just thought of something. What about Malfoy Manor?"
"What, that musty old hovel in Inverness, Scotland?" Fletch said. "Are you saying that you think Lucius Malfoy is hosting Lord Voldemort in his guest room? It's a mansion, not a bed-and-breakfast."
"I think Malfoy's a loyal supporter of Voldemort," Crumb said defensively. "Admit it, you both suspect him too. The only reason he never went to Azkaban is because he's filthy rich and an unscrupulously profiteering turncoat."
"It crossed my mind that Lucius Malfoy knows where Voldemort is concealed," acknowledged Albus, "but to have such a monster living in his own house would be unthinkable. Malfoy is just as terrified of Voldemort as any of us."
"And besides, he has about a million servants and house-elves," Fletch said. "We'd have heard something at least by now."
"You suggest something then," said Crumb, finally getting annoyed.
"Well I was thinking," said Fletch, "what about that secret chamber Arthur Weasley mentioned a few years ago? Ron Weasley said he and Harry Potter had heard Draco Malfoy talk about a secret room under his father's study. But when Arthur managed to organize a raid of Malfoy Manor, the door to the secret room didn't turn up. It was hidden by a magic that was too impenetrable- possibly a magic that Voldemort had taught Lucius Malfoy."
"Or maybe it doesn't exist," said Crumb. "Did you think of that?"
"It has to! That's exactly where I would be if I were Voldemort."
"How do you suggest we get into Malfoy Manor, then?" Crumb asked. "Knock at the front door and say, 'Sorry to bother you, but can we get a bit of a look at your secret chamber?' "
"Listen here-" began Fletch heatedly, but Dumbledore stepped in.
"Stop this, both of you. I can see we've exhausted our mental resources for today. You both have work to do, I expect. I will contact you again when I need you. And Gideon-" Albus held out a piece of parchment and a quill. "Niamh requested an autograph from her favourite Weird Sister."
