Chapter 14 – A Ministerial Intervention
At breakfast on Monday, representatives from the Ministry including several Aurors – Aurors who had never been assigned to the school throughout the year – arrived at the school to collect Hagrid the Groundskeeper. Harry found it particularly strange that they intended to do so at breakfast in view of the entire school, but nobody else seemed to share his view. Instead, most of his friends and the upper years insisted that the Ministry liked to be seen to do the right things.
"Aurors Proudfoot and Dawlish here to collect Rubeus Hagrid for transportation to Azkaban Prison on suspicion of illegally breeding a dragon," announced one of the pair of Aurors at the head of the Ministry delegation once it had reached the Head Table.
They'd sent a Howler ahead of them, which Harry thought excessive – or at least he had before he'd seen the delegation itself. Of course, the Howler hadn't mentioned Azkaban.
"On the order of Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Warrant signed and dated." The man strode forward and stood before the dais on which the teacher's table sat, and brandished a small piece of parchment at Hagrid.
"No, yeh can'—" protested Hagrid. "Not Azkaban!" The large man stood as if to flee.
"Hagrid," said Dumbledore, "please. You must comply, or it will be worse."
"But—but Azkaban… Never again, Professer." Hagrid started to cry.
Professor McGonagall placed her hand on the giant man's arm and whispered something to him. Eventually, he nodded.
"Alrigh'," he said. "I'll go wi' yeh." Hagrid took a deep breath and joined the Ministry delegation, part of which detached from the rest to take Hagrid into custody. Two of the Aurors, the ones Harry assumed were Dawlish and Proudfoot, marched Hagrid out of the Great Hall immediately. The others, along with the remaining Ministry representatives, stayed.
One of them, a small woman dressed head to toe in garish pink robes and an ugly little bow, stepped forward and addressed Professor Dumbledore.
"Hem, hem," the witch said. "Madam Dolores Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, speaking with the full authority of the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge." Umbridge paused, as if waiting for some sort of recognition or acknowledgement. Dumbledore gave her none. Visibly flustered, she continued.
"By order of the Minister, and the Department for the Control of Magical Creatures, with assistance from the Department of Magical Education, I must produce a warrant for an exploratory expedition into the Hogwarts Forest Reserve in search of the XXXXX-rated species Acromantula." Umbridge looked around the room, and at each of the members of staff sat at the head table as if sizing up a gaggle of naughty children. "The Ministry has received dozens of credible reports of the presence of dangerous, unregistered, and illicit creatures living within the Reserve. This cannot be tolerated, and we demand access to the Reserve immediately to ascertain the level of risk and, to be frank, irresponsibility present. It is not the purpose of the Reserve to harbour such creatures and if the violation is severe enough, it may of course result in the revocation of the Reserve Charter."
A wave of sounds ran out through the Great Hall as the students reacted to the Undersecretary's words. Dumbledore immediately quieted the room with a gesture, and stood.
"By all means, the Ministry has my express permission to explore the Forest," he said. "It is regrettable, however, that the one man capable of leading such an expedition safely and within the bounds of the Reserve Charter has recently been escorted to Azkaban. It is wholly inadvisable to travel within the Forest without Mr Hagrid as a guide, lest you accidentally intrude upon the territory of the local centaur herd—which is, I should not need to remind you, theirs by ancient treaty obligation. Mr Hagrid is, of course, the designated intermediary between the centaur herd and the Ministry, as the Groundskeeper and Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts. I would also question the wisdom of embarking upon such an expedition given the status of the Ministry's current search for Sirius Black, who has been sighted in the area, but that is, of course, up to the Ministry and specifically the Department of Magical Law Enforcement whose resources have been stretched quite thinly enough."
Umbridge dropped her sickly-sweet demeanour briefly at the mention of centaurs, but managed to plaster a false smile across her face before speaking again.
"Nevertheless, we have a warrant, and the expedition must occur this afternoon. The Board of Governors has been contacted and has, naturally, given its unanimous approval. Need I remind you—"
"You need not, Madam Undersecretary," said Dumbledore. "The Ministry may go about its business as it sees fit. I would only ask of you all," said Dumbledore, and he turned his gaze away from Umbridge and to the other Ministry representatives, "to exercise the utmost caution when searching the Forest and, if you encounter the centaurs, give them the respect due. They are not especially fond of adult wizards and are apt to respond quite strongly. Alas, the terms of the treaty and the Charter are quite explicit, and—"
"Hem, hem," interrupted Umbridge. "The Ministry is quite aware of its obligations to these… creatures."
"Then we have nothing more to discuss," said Dumbledore. "Now, if you do not mind, the students have had their breakfast interrupted for quite long enough, and your expedition has a long day ahead."
Umbridge frowned at the dismissal, but as there was nothing else she could really do she turned away from Dumbledore and led the expedition out of the Great Hall. As soon as she had left, the Hall exploded into a cacophonous din as the students started to discuss what had just happened.
"That was awful," said Daphne. "So public. That poor man!"
"Well, the Ministry does like to be seen to be doing things," said Blaise, his statement an echo of what a dozen other students had already said in the wake of the Howler.
"I wouldn't call him a poor man," Draco said, "unless you mean that he doesn't have a lot of money, of course."
Harry ignored him and spoke before anyone could answer.
"Who was that?" said Harry. "She was horrible!"
"Mam's worked with her before," said Tracey. "She works for the Minister, and everyone says she's not very nice."
"D'you think they're really going to go into the Forest?" asked Millicent. "They don't look that prepared."
Harry saw Theodore shrug from his seat opposite them.
"The DCMC is usually pretty competent," he said. "But five-X creatures are the most dangerous ones… and the centaurs don't like people trespassing on their land. It could all go really wrong."
"Well, I'm glad someone is finally doing something about all the nonsense here," said Draco from next to Theodore. "Maybe finally Dumbledore will get what's coming to him."
"What will they even do if they find the colony, though?" asked Harry, keen to avoid a rant from Draco. "They can't just—I mean, there's got to be loads of them in there, right? So they can't just kill them all?"
"That Umbridge woman doesn't look all that good with a wand," said Theodore, "but they've got some Aurors with them… She did say it was only an exploratory expedition though, didn't she?"
"You don't just go in to have a chat with an Acromantula, though!" scoffed Millicent.
Draco, seeing that his comments about Dumbledore and even Hagrid himself failed to get any purchase from this part of the group, turned towards Pansy and Vincent instead. Harry heard him say 'Father' this and 'Board of Governors' that, but managed to tune him out. Draco could and would go on for ages like that, and most of the first years knew by now it was best to just stop listening if at all possible.
"Can you imagine the centaurs and unicorns fighting the giant spiders?" said Millicent. "And I've heard there are werewolves living in there too!"
"Werewolves are only wolves at the full moon," said Theodore idly as he ate his breakfast. Millicent didn't look convinced.
"There are forest trolls in there too, aren't there?" added Blaise. "I'm sure I heard one of the third years say something like that."
"What's the difference between a forest troll and a mountain troll?" asked Harry. He'd heard of mountain trolls, of course; everyone at school had during the attack at Hallowe'en.
"Forest trolls live in forests and mountain trolls live on mountains?" offered Blaise, although it seemed more a question than a statement.
Harry rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, okay, fair enough."
"Well, I don't know, do I?" said Blaise. "I'm not a Trollologist."
"Forest trolls are smaller and eat mostly tree bark and insects," said Theodore. He paused. "Although I don't think they could eat an Acromantula."
The discussion grew ever more ridiculous after that, with everyone contributing new scenarios where various different creatures which lived – or could possibly live – in the Forest ended up fighting, sometimes with Sirius Black, and other times with the Ministry expedition. By the time breakfast had finished, almost all the first year Slytherins – and a large number of students from other years and Houses – wanted to head out to the edge of the Forest to watch for the Ministry delegation.
It seemed to Harry like half the student body ended up sat by the side of the lake watching for the Ministry witches and wizards to come back from the Forest, but there hadn't been any activity from the Forest over the course of the whole day. To look at the dark mass of trees nothing at all strange was going on inside, or at least nothing stranger than usual. By dinner time, still no one had emerged from the Forest, and it was the talk of the whole school. People began to place bets on when – and if – the Ministry expedition would get out of the Forest and by the end of the day several of the older students had collected quite the list of betters with hefty sacks of coin to match.
The next day saw just as many students waiting at the edge of the Forest, but after yet another full day of disappointment, interest began to wane. The upper years all had rather a lot of work to do, according to them at least, so by the third day it was mainly first and second who were still invested enough in the outcome of the Forest expedition to wait at the Forest edge.
And not even the first and second years were overly concerned, as most of them had brought other things to keep themselves occupied with, from books to games and other things. It seemed as if the Ministry delegation had gotten itself well and truly lost within the Forest.
Just after lunchtime on the third day, several dirty and tired wizards and witches emerged from the Forest. Millicent noticed them first, having been much more interested in their fate than the other first years who were playing a card game, Harry included. She pointed it out excitedly.
"Look! They're back!" She almost jumped to her feet, knocking Harry's cards from his hand. He glowered at her, as he'd had a winning hand and now they were all on display. He gathered them up quickly while everyone else looked towards the forest just in case the game continued.
When Harry finally got around to looking he was greeted by a grim sight.
Three members of the expedition were nowhere to be found – one of the Aurors, if Harry remembered correctly, and two of the representatives from the magical creatures department at the Ministry – but the Senior Undersecretary limped out of the Forest at the head of the reduced delegation with raggedy robes and a scowling face.
The remnants of the Ministry delegation marched past the curious onlookers without so much as a word, and headed straight for the Entrance Hall. Most of them looked more exhausted than angry, although Madam Umbridge more than made up for that. She positively bristled with rage, alternating between muttering darkly and shooting scathing looks at the various gathered students. The expedition brushed right past the Auror on duty without being checked by the Dark Detector. Groups of interested students – literally all of them who had been outside on the grounds, it seemed to Harry – followed them at a safe distance, all Dark Detection protocol forgotten and ignored even by the Auror on post, until they reached the Great Hall where several of the teachers were supervising a structured homework session.
"You!" shrieked Umbridge, pointing her wand at Professor McGonagall. "Where is Dumbledore? Those—those things took Auror Fawcett hostage! They ate Juniper and Crossman! This cannot be tolerated!"
"Madam, I can assure you, you will get much further if you stop pointing your wand at me," said McGonagall coolly. "This is neither the time nor the place for this discussion."
"Where is Dumbledore?" repeated Umbridge. "Someone must be held accountable!"
"Indeed, I am sure someone will be held accountable," said McGonagall, although her tone and the way she looked Umbridge up and down suggested it would be her rather than Dumbledore. "Now, I think we would all be better off if we moved this… conversation… to the Hospital Wing, where our mediwitch can see to you all and we can Floo the Ministry to contact Professor Dumbledore. Now, if you would…?" McGonagall gestured with her non-wand hand to the Great Hall doors that allowed passage to the rest of the castle.
Umbridge looked as if she were about to continue the argument, but instead turned on her heel and led the Ministry expedition out of the Great Hall. Several groups of students moved to follow, but stopped sheepishly when McGonagall rebuked them.
"That's fifty points taken for anyone who dares follow them," she said. "One hundred points if your names happen to be Fred and George Weasley."
The Weasley twins, who were already past the Great Hall's threshold, tiptoed back into the Hall at McGonagall's words, and eventually sat down at the Gryffindor table pretending that they hadn't moved at all. The Head Boy – their brother – moved to sit next to them immediately.
The first year Slytherins, bereft of any particular reason to stay outside and not wanting overly much to join the guided homework session in the Great Hall, retreated to the Slytherin Common Room chatting about what they'd just seen.
"What do you reckon will come of all that?" Blaise asked as they walked back to the dungeons. "Not a good look, is it?"
"That Umbridge woman probably wants to burn the Forest down and evict all the creatures," Daphne said. "I suppose losing the Acromantulas wouldn't be the worst thing, but..."
Millicent grimaced.
"But the Acromantulas are the coolest thing in the Forest!" she said.
"I don't think they can even do anything like that," Theodore said. "The treaty and the Charter Dumbledore mentioned probably won't let them, and I don't think Dumbledore would be too keen on it either."
"We'll find out soon enough, I suppose," Harry said. Acromantulas couldn't just go around killing and kidnapping Ministry officials without some sort of response. It didn't matter, anyway, as it was still the Easter holiday and everyone wanted to enjoy what was left of it.
In the end nothing seemed to have come from the Ministry Expedition into the Forbidden Forest. At least, nothing public, and no more representatives came to the school, which left the status of the missing Auror questionable. But Harry supposed all that was a problem for someone else, and he only needed to worry about Sirius Black – and his homework.
The rest of the Easter half-term holiday flew by for Harry in a chaotic maelstrom of essays, library research, and assigned readings that all needed to be done and required rather a lot more work than he'd thought, and which he knew he should have started earlier on. He found himself in good company, however, as nearly all his classmates had done exactly the same thing. Madam Pince had already kicked the admittedly quite large group of Slytherin first years out of the library for excessive boisterousness twice over the last week of half-term.
Harry felt incredibly thankful that he'd sat with Theodore to finish all his homework already, as he could lounge about doing nothing in particular whilst the rest of his friends laboured like house elves to get their essays finished before dinner time on the very last day of the holiday. Instead of messing about with parchment and inkpots that spilled all too easily, Harry sank into a plush armchair near to one of the fires in the Common Room with his nose in the next Redwand book.
He didn't want to get too into it, since dinner time was rather soon, but he'd learned by now that unless he busied himself with something when everyone else was doing homework, he'd be inundated with questions and drawn into arguments over things that could be easily looked up in one of the many textbooks littering the study tables in the Common Room.
"D'you think McGonagall will mind that my essay is only five inches instead of seven?" asked Millicent to the rest of the room. "I can't think of anything else to put."
"I had to trim mine down from nine!" said Daphne. "Did you put in the bit about how visual similarities invoke a spell symbolism? I got three inches from that! Well, one and a half once I cut it down."
Millicent groaned.
"I didn't do that because I don't really get why it happens… Is it to do with what Flitwick said about, erm, you know, the thingy?"
"Esoteric symbolism," said Daphne, speaking slowly, as if to a very young child. "And yes, a little bit. And what Madame Helix said in Foundational Skills, remember?"
"Can I just copy yours?"
"No!" said Daphne, aghast. She paused. "But I will tell you what to write, in a different way to how I did it, so we don't get caught. If you want."
"Brilliant! Thanks, Daph."
Harry managed to get through to the end of his chapter before it was time to go for dinner, and he felt quite pleased about his progress. Some of his peers were less than thrilled at having to leave their homework behind, however.
"Oh, no!" wailed Victoria Runcorn. "I've not finished my charms essay yet; I'll be up all night doing it now!"
"How much have you got left?" asked Pansy. She glanced over at the parchment. "Oh. Well, good luck… We should get to dinner if we want one of the good seats."
Harry rolled his eyes. The first years never really got a choice on where to sit – the older students invariably pushed them to sit right at the end of the table closest to where the teachers sat – but Pansy always made a point not to sit next to certain other first years. After almost a whole school year of it, Harry had grown bored of the whole song and dance of it.
He got up from his armchair and nudged Theodore into action. The other boy could get so lost in his books that he forgot to pay attention to anything, and would sometimes miss meals if nobody grabbed him.
"It's dinner time," explained Harry.
Theodore nodded and joined Harry's small group of Slytherins as they made their way to the Great Hall. Daphne was still walking Millicent through the concept of visual symbolism in transfiguration, which Harry didn't feel like thinking about just then, and Tracey had managed to corner Blaise to talk to him about Italian magical opera of all things, so Harry tried to draw Theodore into conversation. Although the other boy was almost always companionable and Harry considered him a good friend, Harry found that if left to himself Theodore was prone to fade into the background quietly.
"You've finished Redwand and the Gyre of Fate already, haven't you?" asked Harry. "Don't tell me about the thing with the cyclops!" he warned. "But what did you think about the mermaid queen?"
Theodore grinned.
"I don't know if I should say! She comes back later on. Have you got to the bit where they—where, you know, there's that Muggle pirate and the Seeress?"
"Oh, yeah!" said Harry. "I just got to the bit where she says about the prophecy and the crystal ball. Don't tell me what she says to him, though. Is that really how you do it, then? Just look in and then you see the future?"
"Sort of," he said. "Normal wizards have to use balls and tea leaves and all that to See anything, and it usually doesn't work like it does for True Seers. Then you've got Naming Seers; they have real talent but it's not like the really famous Seers or anything." Theodore paused and then explained after Harry made a confused face. "Some people take their babies to a Naming Seer who can kind of See a little bit about their future, so they know what to name them. It goes in and out of fashion. But the one in the book is meant to be a real Seer, one of the ones that can make true prophecies. They're meant to just kind of See it, in visions, but there aren't many of them these days. Trelawney's grandmother was a real Seer; they say she predicted Grindelwald's rise to power."
"That must be a hard act to follow," said Harry. "I bet that's why she's so…" He gestured vaguely. "You know."
As they walked into the Great Hall, Harry glanced at the head table and forgot what he was about to say. Sat in his usual seat, and looking only a little bit disturbed, was Hagrid the Groundskeeper. The giant man looked more tired than Harry had ever seen anyone look, and although he seemed a bit jumpy, Hagrid seemed to have taken his brief spell in prison rather well. Harry hadn't heard anything good about the wizard prison, so he assumed Hagrid was made of pretty solid stuff to come through it as anything less than a gibbering idiot.
Even if he did look a bit more unkempt than usual.
"I wonder how Dumbledore got him out," Harry said.
"He's the Chief Warlock," said Theodore. He shrugged. "Doubt we'll ever know how."
"Yeah, I suppose," agreed Harry.
Harry took a seat next to Blaise close to the end of the Slytherin table, and made a space for Theodore to sit. The table soon filled up, and when the last student – Florence Nettlestalk from Adder group – arrived at the table and one of her friends tried to make a space for her, Pansy interrupted with a snide comment.
"There's no space for little girls here, Floz," Pansy said to a chorus of giggles from some of the girls around her. She waved Florence off to the very end of the table. Harry would have just sat down, but then, Harry didn't give a fig what Pansy thought or said.
Once everyone had arrived to dinner, the typical Sunday fare appeared on platters and dishes on each of the five tables in the Hall. Sundays usually meant roasted meat of some kind, most often chicken and pork, with the usual array of vegetables and generous helpings of gravy. Harry tucked in to his meal and dipped in and out of conversation with his friends.
Daphne had stopped talking Millicent through the missing parts of her essay to instead complain about how Millicent did her hair; uninterested in the topic generally, and specifically wanting to avoid discussion of his own unruly hair, Harry kept well away.
Fortunately, at least as far as Harry was concerned, Tracey and Blaise had moved away from their discussion of Italian magical opera to talk about Quidditch, and even Theodore had joined in.
"The Harpies will probably win the league this year," conceded Blaise, "but the Magpies still have a chance."
"Not when the Wasps knock them out of the running next weekend," said Theodore. "This is the first year I haven't seen one of their matches. Just the wireless…"
Harry did enjoy the Quidditch talk, but he hadn't ever seen a proper professional match, and didn't have a preferred team. Of the teams in the professional league, the Wimbourne Wasps were closest to him and he supposed they were his 'local' team, but he wanted to see them play before making a decision over who to support.
"The World Cup is this year, isn't it?" said Harry. "So if you don't manage to see the Wasps, you could still go watch a national game."
"I did mention it to my father at Christmas," said Theodore. He shrugged. "So maybe."
"Dad got us tickets to see the Harpies play the Catapults just after we break up!" said Tracey. "It's going to be amazing! A proper derby."
"The Catapults don't have a look in," said Blaise dismissively. "They're bottom of the league this year. The Harpies will destroy them."
"Yeah, probably," agreed Tracey. "But the Catapults' Beaters are great at blocking the Seeker. Weren't you saying about that technique they used last week, Harry? So the match should be exciting anyway. And it's only an exhibition match ahead of the World Cup."
"Oh, yeah—the Seeker Smash. They go after the opposing Seeker and stop them from even looking at the Snitch. They can only do it because their Keeper is really good and they can skimp on goal defence," said Harry. He'd read about it in Quidditch Weekly. "But their own Seeker is terrible so they never win many points." Harry thought back to the wireless match between the Catapults and Pride of Portree the previous week. "And sometimes it doesn't work—they'd have lost last week on Quaffles even if they'd got the Snitch, which they didn't."
The conversation continued until eventually Tracey became drawn into Daphne and Millicent's argument over hair styling, although the boys did manage to keep it up through the end of the dessert course. It ended, like every other conversation in the Hall, when Dumbledore stood up to make an announcement.
"I shan't take overly long with my announcements this evening," said Dumbledore, "as I know you are all longing for bed and a chance to get well-rested before the resumption of lessons tomorrow morning. Firstly I should like to welcome Mr Hagrid back, exonerated and with a full apology from the Ministry after the unpleasantness this past week." Dumbledore paused to start a clap, which was picked up awkwardly by the teachers and eventually the students. "And secondly, it is with deep sadness that I must announce that Professor Trelawney shall not be returning to teach Divination for the remainder of this year. We all hope that she will recover as quickly as possible, but alas, she will not be ready to return tomorrow. It is with a heavy heart that I must announce all Divination lessons for students in fourth year are cancelled; Professor Trelawney's fifth year NEWT classes and third year OWL classes will proceed as usual under the supervision of Mr Michael Killarney, whom some of you will know as Professor Trelawney's apprentice."
Dumbledore gestured towards the end of the Head Table where a twitchy, nervous-looking young man sat amongst the other apprentices. Harry recognised him from the Christmas Feast, although he hadn't made much of an impression then either. Mr Killarney gave a jerky wave and then immediately looked down towards the table.
Dumbledore started and then led a round of applause for the young man, although the response from the wider student body was muted and half-hearted at best.
"I wish you all a good night and sweet dreams," said Dumbledore, "because tomorrow, we must begin anew our collective journey to academic excellence. It is, after all, almost time for exams!"
Dumbledore sat down. Within moments students started to leave their tables and head off to their Common Rooms.
"Bad news for Trelawney," said Blaise as the group walked back to the dungeons. "If she's not fixed by now it could take a while…"
"Her apprentice looked a bit weird," said Millicent.
"I heard he's muggleborn," said Tracey. "And a Seer! That doesn't happen very often. It must have been hard growing up, not knowing what was happening to him!"
"I don't think muggleborns can even have powers like that," said Theodore. "I've never read about it, anyway—all the books say you only find them in old families. Maybe he's a half-blood, and just doesn't know?"
"Well, maybe," said Tracey, although to Harry's ears she didn't sound convinced. "But I don't see why it would be impossible. All magic has to come from somewhere first of all, doesn't it?"
"I've never heard of such a thing either," admitted Daphne. "Everyone says it's not possible… Normal magic, obviously—they wouldn't be allowed in Hogwarts otherwise—but the special powers are really rare even for the old pureblood families."
"Maybe his grandparents are Squibs, or something like that," said Blaise. "So he's not really muggleborn, and it could have skipped a generation?"
"Why couldn't a muggleborn have powers like that?" asked Harry. He didn't know of any reason, but he realised that the things he didn't know about the wizarding world would literally fill dozens of libraries' worth of books, so felt like he should at least ask.
Theodore, Blaise, and Daphne looked towards one another, but none of them said anything for a few moments, until eventually Daphne shrugged.
"Well, some people say muggleborns steal their magic—not on purpose, but accidentally—from weak witches and wizards, so they only ever get a bit of power, and they can't do that to anyone with real powers. I don't believe that, of course!" said Daphne. "I was taught it's because their magic is too new and hasn't had time to settle yet."
"I heard about the stealing magic thing," said Harry. "Professor Flitwick said it was nonsense."
"I did say that I didn't believe in it," said Daphne defensively. "Decent people usually don't, of course. But it is a popular explanation…"
Harry looked towards Theodore and Blaise to get their opinions. Neither boy seemed to want to look him in the eye, although eventually Theodore did speak up.
"I have read something like that before," he said. "I hadn't really thought about it much," he continued, although Harry knew Theodore well enough by then to know that the other boy was lying.
"Who cares about the Divination apprentice, anyway?" said Millicent. "Daph, can you explain to me again the—the what was it? The symbolism thing, please? I forgot what you said before and I really don't want to hand it in to McGonagall without it…"
Daphne gave an exaggerated sigh and moved closer to Millicent.
"Of course I will. You see, it's really quite simple…"
Harry tuned them out. He'd finished his homework already and didn't want to hear anything that might make him think otherwise. He turned to carry on talking with Theodore and Blaise, but the other two boys had hurried along the dungeon corridor. Harry shrugged to himself, and then fell in line with Tracey.
"I still think muggleborns can be Seers," she said. "The purebloods get like that sometimes. All 'old families' this, and 'but of course muggleborns can't' that." Tracey rolled her eyes. "They all pretend they've forgot that once, there was no such thing as purebloods, and there were still Seers and all that."
Tracey stormed off, which left Harry alone for a few moments until he raced to catch up with her.
