Chapter 147: Sacks And Interviews

On Monday morning, it seemed like Hermione wasn't the only one waiting on the Daily Prophet to arrive. Nearly everyone was eager for more news about the escaped Death Eaters, who, despite many reported sightings, had still not been caught. When Hermione got hers, she gave the delivery owl a Knut and unfolded the newspaper eagerly.

Harry had an old owl drop something off in front of him too. Thinking it was a mistake, he tried to steer the bird into another direction.

"Who're you after?" he asked it as he leaned in to see who the letter was addressed to. As he took the letter out of the owl's beak, five more owls fluttered down beside it and knocking things about trying to deliver their letters to him.

"What's going on?" I asked in amazement, as the whole of Gryffindor table leaned forwards to watch and another seven owls landed amongst the first ones, screeching, hooting and flapping their wings.

"Harry!" said Hermione breathlessly, plunging her hands into the feathery mass and pulling out a screech owl bearing a long, cylindrical package. "I think I know what this means-open this one first!"

Harry ripped off the brown packaging. Out rolled a tightly furled copy of the March edition of The Quibbler. He unrolled it to see his own face grinning sheepishly at him from the front cover. In large red letters across from the picture were the words:

HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST:

THE TRUTH ABOUT HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED

AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN

"It's good, isn't it?" said Luna, who had walked over to the Gryffindor table and now squeezed herself onto the bench between Fred and I. "It came out yesterday, I asked Dad to send you a free copy. I expect all these are letters from readers."

"That's what I thought," said Hermione eagerly. "Harry, d'you mind if we-?"

"Help yourself," said Harry, feeling slightly perplexed.

Hermione and I both started ripping open envelopes as if it were Christmas.

"This one's from a bloke who thinks you're off your rocker," I said, reading the letter in my hand. "Ah well ..."

"This woman recommends you try a good course of Shock Spells at St. Mungo's," said Hermione, looking disappointed and crumpling up a second.

"This one looks OK, though," said Harry slowly scanning a long letter from a witch in Paisley. "Hey she says she believes me!"

"This one's in two minds," said Fred, who had joined in the letter-opening with enthusiasm. "Says you don't come across as a mad person, but he really doesn't want to believe You-Know-Who's back so he doesn't know what to think now. Blimey, what a waste of parchment."

"Here's another one you've convinced, Harry!" said Hermione excitedly. "Having read your side of the story, I am forced to the conclusion that the Daily Prophet has treated you very unfairly ... little though I want to think that He Who Must Not Be Named has returned, I am forced to accept that you are telling the truth ...Oh, this is wonderful!"

"Another one who thinks you're barking," I said, throwing a crumpled letter over my shoulder "... but this one says you've got her converted and she now thinks you're a real hero-she's put in a photograph, too...blimey!"

It was a picture of a witch who looked about Tonks age wearing what seemed to be muggle clothes I had seen in one of Dean's muggle magazines of half naked women. She looked lovely as hell, and was about to take her bra off, when...

"I'll take that, thank you!" said Fred, yanking the photo out of my hand. Wanker.

"What is going on here?" said an annoying a fake girly voice.

Harry looked up with his hands full of envelopes. Professor Umbridge was standing behind Fred and Luna, her bulging toad's eyes scanning the mess of owls and letters on the table in front of Harry. Behind her he saw many of the students watching us attentively.

"Why have you got all these letters, Mr. Potter?" she asked slowly.

"Is that a crime now?" said Fred loudly. "Getting mail?"

"Be careful, Mr Weasley or I shall have to put you in detention," said Umbridge. "Well, Mr Potter?"

"People have written to me because I gave an interview," said Harry, with a bit of hesitation. "About what happened to me last June."

"An interview?" repeated Umbridge, her voice shot and higher than ever. 'What do you mean?"

"I mean a reporter asked me questions and I answered them," said Harry, causing Fred and I to snicker. "Here."

He threw the copy of The Quibbler to her. She caught it and stared down at the cover. Her face turned purple, like a albino toad getting the squeeze put on it.

"When did you do this?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

"Last Hogsmeade weekend," said Harry, casually.

She looked up at him, eyes filling with rage, the magazine shaking in her stubby fingers.

"There will be no more Hogsmeade trips for you, Mr. Potter," she whispered. "How you dare ... how you could ..." She took a deep breath. "I have tried again and again to teach you not to tell lies. The message, apparently, has still not sunk in. Fifty points from Gryffindor and another week's worth of detentions."

She stalked away, clutching The Quibbler to her chest, the eyes of many students following her.

Hermione looked at Harry, a guilty expression on her face. "Sorry Harry. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Harry shrugged. "It was. I knew I wasn't going to get away with that one."

By mid-morning enormous signs had been put up all over the school, not just on house noticeboards, but in the corridors and classrooms too.

BY ORDER OF THE HIGH INQUISITOR OF HOGWARTS

Any student found in possession of the magazine The Quibbler will be expelled.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven.

Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge, High Inquisitor

For some reason, every time Hermione caught sight of one of these signs she beamed with pleasure.

"What exactly are you so happy about?" Harry asked her.

"Oh, Harry, don't you see?" Hermione said. "If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!"

She was right. By the end of the day, though none of us had not seen so much as a corner of The Quibbler anywhere in the school, the whole place seemed to be quoting the interview to each other. We heard them whispering about it as we queued up outside classes, discussing it over lunch and in the back of lessons, while Hermione even reported that every occupant of the cubicles in the girls' loo had been talking about it when she nipped in there before Ancient Runes.

"Then they spotted me, and obviously they know I know you, so they bombarded me with questions," Hermione told Harry, her eyes shining, "and Harry, I think they believe you, I really do. I think you've finally got them convinced!"

Meanwhile, Professor Umbitch was stalking the school, stopping students at random and demanding that they turn out their books and pockets looking for copies of The Quibbler, but the students were several steps ahead of her. The pages carrying Harry's interview had been bewitched to resemble extracts from textbooks if anyone but themselves read it, or else wiped magically blank until they wanted to pursue it again. Soon it seemed that every single person in the school had read it.

The teachers were of course forbidden from mentioning the interview by Educational Decree Number Twenty-six, but they found ways to express their feelings about it all the same. Professor Sprout awarded Gryffindor twenty points when Harry passed her a watering can; a beaming Professor Flitwick gave Harry a box of squeaking sugar mice on him at the end of Charms, said, "Shh!" and hurried away; and Professor Trelawney broke into hysterical sobs during Divination and announced to the startled class, and a very disapproving Umbridge, that Harry was not going to suffer an early death after all, but would live to a ripe old age, become Minister for Magic and have twelve children.

But I think what made Harry happiest was Cho catching up with him as he and I were rushing to Transfiguration the next day. She had snatched his hand, whispered something in his ear that made him half wince/half grin, swiftly kissed him on the cheek, then left for class.

I gave Harry a smirk as he blushed furiously. No sooner had we arrived outside Transfiguration than something else positive happened: Seamus stepped out of the queue to face him.

"I just wanted to say," he mumbled, squinting at Harry's left knee, "I believe you. And I've sent a copy of that magazine to me mam."

Harry nodded, gave Seamus a pat on the back to relieve the awkwardness, and the three of us laughed as we entered the classroom.

To add to the bliss, Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were beside themselves. In the library with Theodore Nott, they gave us (mainly Harry) menacing looks. Goyle cracked his knuckles threateningly and Malfoy whispered something that was probably unpleasant to Crabbe. Harry had named all of their fathers as Death Eaters, and I guess they had a slight issue with it.

"And the best bit," whispered Hermione gleefully, as we left the library, "is they can't contradict you, because they can't admit they've read the article!"

To top it all, Luna told Harry over dinner that no issue of The Quibbler had ever sold out faster.

"Dad's reprinting!" she said, her eyes popping excitedly. "He can't believe it, he says people seem even more interested in this than the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks!"

Harry was a hero in the Gryffindor common room that night. With no fear whatsoever, Fred and George had put an Enlargement Charm on the front cover of The Quibbler and hung it on the wall, so that Harry's giant head gazed down upon the proceedings, occasionally saying things like 'THE MINISTRY ARE TOSSERS" and "EAT SHIT, UMBITCH" in a booming voice. Hermione did not find this very amusing; she said it interfered with her concentration, and she ended up going to bed early out of irritation. After awhile, I became less amused by it as well, and after a while, Harry went upstairs, saying he was tired.

Thirty minutes and two Exploding Snap games with my brothers, Dean, and Seamus later, I decided to pack it in as well. When I got up to the dorm, I saw that Harry was already asleep, so I began to change into my pajamas to do the same.

Suddenly, Harry cried out and started attacking his bed curtains, becoming entangled within them.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

"What?"I yelled.

Harry fell into the floor. His eyes snapped open and he stared hard at me.

"Will you stop acting like a maniac so I can get you out of here!" I said frustrated.

I wrenched the hangings apart and Harry stared up at me in pain.

"Has someone been attacked again?" I asked frantically, pulling Harry roughly to his feet. "Is it Dad? Is it that snake?"

"No-everyone's fine-" gasped Harry, gasping. "Well ... Avery isn't ... he's in trouble ... he gave him the wrong information ... Voldemort's really angry ..."

Harry groaned and sank, shaking, onto his bed, rubbing his scar.

"But Rookwood's going to help him now ... he's on the right track again ..."

"What are you talking about?" I said, starting to feel frightful. " D'you mean ... did you just see You-Know-Who?"

"I was You-Know-Who," said Harry, and he stretched out his hands and held them up to his face, as if he was checking to see if they were his. "He was with Rookwood, he's one of the Death Eaters who escaped from Azkaban, remember? Rookwood's just told him Bode couldn't have done it."

"Done what?"

"Remove something ... he said Bode would have known he couldn't have done it ... Bode was under the Imperius Curse ... I think he said Malfoy's dad put it on him."

"Bode was bewitched to remove something?" I said. "But-Harry, that's got to be-"

"The weapon," Harry finished. "I know."

The dormitory door opened; Dean and Seamus came in. Harry swung his legs back into bed, probably not wanting to raise suspicion.

"Did you say," I said, putting my head close to Harry's and making it look like j was getting the jug of water on his bedside table, "that you were You-Know-Who?"

"Yeah," said Harry quietly.

I gulped my water down too quickly and some spilled out of my mouth.

"Harry, you've got to tell-"

"I haven't got to tell anyone," said Harry shortly. "I wouldn't have seen it at all if I could do Occlumency. I'm supposed to have learned to shut this stuff out. That's what they want."

I left the debate where it was. I knew there was no convincing him otherwise. His mind was made up. I climbed into my bed and went to sleep.

Harry and I waited until break next morning to tell Hermione exactly what had happened. Standing in our usual corner of the cool and breezy courtyard, Harry told her every detail of the dream he could remember. When he had finished, she said nothing at all for a few moments, but stared with a kind of painful intensity at Fred and George, who were both headless and selling their magical hats from under their cloaks on the other side of the yard.

"So that's why they killed him," she said quietly, looking away from my brothers. "When Bode tried to steal this weapon, something funny happened to him. I think there must be defensive spells on it, or around it, to stop people touching it. That's why he was in St. Mungo's, his brain had gone all funny and he couldn't talk. But remember what the Healer told us? He was recovering. And they couldn't risk him getting better, could they? I mean, the shock of whatever happened when he touched that weapon probably made the Imperius Curse lift. Once he'd got his voice back, he'd explain what he'd been doing, wouldn't he? They would have known he'd been sent to steal the weapon. Of course, it would have been easy for Lucius Malfoy to put the curse on him. Never out of the Ministry, is he?"

"He was even hanging around that day I had my hearing," said Harry. "In the-hang on ...He was in the Department of Mysteries corridor that day! Your dad said he was probably trying to sneak down and find out what happened in my hearing, but what if-"

"Sturgis!" gasped Hermione, looking thunderstruck.

"Sorry?" I said, bewildered.

"Sturgis Podmore -" said Hermione breathlessly, "arrested for trying to get through a door! Lucius Malfoy must have got him too! I bet he did it the day you saw him there, Harry. Sturgis had Moody's Invisibility Cloak, right? So, what if he was standing guard by the door, invisible, and Malfoy heard him move-or guessed someone was there-or just did the Imperius Curse on the off-chance there'd be a guard there? So, when Sturgis next had an opportunity-probably when it was his turn on guard duty again-he tried to get into the Department to steal the weapon for Voldemort-Ron, be quiet(I had winced and made a sound)-but he got caught and sent to Azkaban ..."

She gazed at Harry.

"And now Rookwood's told Voldemort how to get the weapon?"

"I didn't hear all the conversation, but that's what it sounded like," said Harry. "Rookwood used to work there ... maybe Voldemort'll send Rookwood to do it?"

Hermione nodded, apparently still lost in thought. Then, quite abruptly, she said, "But you shouldn't have seen this at all, Harry."

"What?" he said, taken aback.

"You're supposed to be learning how to close your mind to this sort of thing," said Hermione, suddenly stern.

"I know I am," said Harry. "But-"

"Well, I think we should just try and forget what you saw," said Hermione firmly. "And you ought to put in a bit more effort on your Occlumency from now on."

Harry seemed like that was not what he wanted to hear from Hermione, so for the rest of the day, he didn't talk to her. As if the day wasn't dismal enough, when people were not discussing the escaped Death Eaters in the corridors, they were laughing at our abysmal performance in out match against Hufflepuff; the Slytherins were singing "Weasley is our King" so loudly and frequently that by sundown Filch had banned it from the corridors out of sheer irritation, the only good thing the man had ever done.

A week later, while Hermione and I were eating dinner while Harry was off with Snape, we heard a great and high pitched argument from outside of the Great Hall.

"What the bloody hell?" I exclaimed through a mouth full of food.

"Come on, let's go! " said Hermione, pulling me by the sleeve.

The rest of the students were starting to flock to the door as well, and when it had been opened and we came out, we were met with a depressing sight.

Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the Entrance Hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking absolutely mental. Her hair was sticking up on end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other, and her shawls were hanging from her shoulders. Two large trunks were on the floor beside her, one of them upside-down. It looked like mine did when I would pitch them down the steps at the Burrow.

"Oh Ron, she is being sacked!" whispered Hermione in my ear, her tone sad.

Professor Trelawney was staring at the great pink toad, completely out of sorts.

"No!" she shrieked. "NO! This cannot be happening ... it cannot ... I refuse to accept it!"

"You didn't realize this was coming?" said Umbitch, as if the situation was amusing. "Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow's weather, you must surely have realised that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable that you would be sacked?"

"You c-can't!" howled Professor Trelawney, tears streaming down her face from behind her enormous lenses, "you c-can't sack me! I've been here sixteen years! H- Hogwarts is m-my h-home!"

I felt terrible for her. She may not have been the most competent teacher, but she was a sweet woman, who really, minus predicting Harry's demise every few weeks, never done a thing to harm anyone. She did not deserve what was happening to her.

"It was your home," said Professor Umbridge, and I was completely disgusted to see the enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney sink, sobbing uncontrollably, onto one of her trunks, "until an hour ago, when the Minister for Magic countersigned your Order of Dismissal. Now kindly remove yourself from this Hall. You are embarrassing us."

She stood and watched, with an expression of gloating enjoyment, as Professor Trelawney shuddered and moaned, rocking backwards and forwards on her trunk in paroxysms of grief. Then, Professor McGonagall marched straight up to Professor Trelawney and was patting her firmly on the back while withdrawing a large handkerchief from within her robes.

"There, there, Sybill ... calm down ... blow your nose on this ... it's not as bad as you think, now ... you are not going to have to leave Hogwarts."

"Oh really, Professor McGonagall?" said Umbridge in a deadly voice, taking a few steps forward. "And your authority for that statement is ... ?"

"That would be mine," said a deep voice.

The huge doors leading to outside the grounds opened and there stood Dumbledore, looking as if he were a savior in the midst of sorrow. He had a quaint smile on his face, which seemed unusual in the circumstances. Leaving the doors wide open behind him, he strode forwards towards Professor Trelawney, tear-stained and trembling, on her trunk, Professor McGonagall alongside her.

"Yours, Professor Dumbledore?" said Umbridge, with a smug yet unpleasant little laugh. "I'm afraid you do not understand the position. I have here-" she pulled a parchment scroll from within her robes "-an Order of Dismissal signed by myself and the Minister for Magic. Under the terms of Educational Decree Number Twenty-three, the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts has the power to inspect, place upon probation and sack any teacher she-that is to say, I-feel is not performing to the standards required by the Ministry of Magic. I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch. I have dismissed her."

Dumbledore continued to smile. He looked down at Professor Trelawney, who was still sobbing and choking on her trunk, and said, "You are quite right, of course, Professor Umbridge. As High Inquisitor you have every right to dismiss my teachers. You do not, however, have the authority to send them away from the castle. I am afraid," he went on, with a courteous little bow, "that the power to do that still resides with the Headmaster, and it is my wish that Professor Trelawney continue to live at Hogwarts."

At this, Professor Trelawney gave a wild little laugh in which a hiccough was barely hidden.

"No-no, I'll g -go, Dumbledore! I sh-shall-leave Hogwarts and seek my fortune elsewhere-"

"No," said Dumbledore sharply. "It is my wish that you remain, Sybill."

He turned to Professor McGonagall.

"Might I ask you to escort Sybill back upstairs, Professor McGonagall?"

"Of course," said McGonagall. "Up you get, Sybill."

Professor Sprout came hurrying forwards out of the crowd and grabbed Professor Trelawney's other arm. Together, they guided her past Umbridge and up the marble stairs. Professor Flitwick went scurrying after them, his wand held out before him; he squeaked "Locomotor trunks!" and Professor Trelawney's luggage rose into the air and proceeded up the staircase after her, Professor Flitwick bringing up the rear.

Professor Umbridge was standing stock still, staring at Dumbledore, who continued to smile benignly.

"And what," she said, in a whisper that carried all around the Entrance Hall, "are you going to do with her once I appoint a new Divination teacher who needs her lodgings?"

"Oh, that won't be a problem," said Dumbledore pleasantly. "You see, I have already found us a new Divination teacher, and he will prefer lodgings on the ground floor."

"You've found- ?" said Umbridge shrilly. "You've found? Might I remind you, Dumbledore, that under Educational Decree Number Twenty-two-"

"The Ministry has the right to appoint a suitable candidate if-and only if-the Headmaster is unable to find one," said Dumbledore. "And I am happy to say that on this occasion I have succeeded. May I introduce you?"

He turned to face the open front doors, through which night mist was now drifting. I heard the faint sound of hooves and seen what looked to e a centaur. He had white-blond hair and fascinatingly bright blue eyes.

"This is Firenze," said Dumbledore happily to a thunderstruck Umbridge. "I think you'll find him suitable."