Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (69 page)

'STOP THEM!' shrieked Umbridge, but it was too late. As the Inquisitorial Squad closed in, Fred and George kicked off from the floor, shooting fifteen feet into the air, the iron peg swinging dangerously below. Fred looked across the hall at the poltergeist bobbing on his level above the crowd.

'Give her hell from us, Peeves.'

And Peeves, who Harry had never seen take an order from a student before, swept his belled hat from his head and sprang to a salute as Fred and George wheeled about to tumultuous applause from the students below and sped out of the open front doors into the glorious sunset.

just a few stairs in front of him, once more looking down upon her prey. 'So - you think it amusing to turn a school corridor into a swamp, do you?'

'Pretty amusing, yeah,' said Fred, looking up at her without the slightest sign of fear.

Filch elbowed his way closer to Umbridge, almost crying with happiness.

'I've got the form, Headmistress,' he said hoarsely, waving the piece of parchment Harry had just seen him take from her desk. 'I've got the form and I've got the whips waiting… oh, let me do it now

'Very good, Argus,' she said. 'You two,' she went on, gazing down at Fred and George, 'are about to learn what happens to wrongdoers in my school.'

'You know what?' said Fred. 'I don't think we are.'

He turned to his twin.

'George,' said Fred, 'I think we've outgrown full-time education.'

'Yeah, I've been feeling that way myself,' said George lightly.

Time to test our talents in the real world, d'you reckon?' asked Fred.

'Definitely,' said George.

And before Umbridge could say a word, they raised their wands and said together:

'Accio brooms!'

Harry heard a loud crash somewhere in the distance. Looking to his left, he ducked just in time. Fred and George's broomsticks, one still trailing the heavy chain and iron peg with which Umbridge had fastened them to the wall, were hurtling along the corridor towards their owners; they turned left, streaked down the stairs and stopped sharply in front of the twins, the chain clattering loudly on the flagged stone floor.

'We won't be seeing you,' Fred told Professor Umbridge, swinging his leg over his broomstick.

'Yeah, don't bother to keep in touch,' said George, mounting his own.

Fred looked around at the assembled students, at the silent, watchful crowd.

'If anyone fancies buying a Portable Swamp, as demonstrated upstairs, come to number ninety-three, Diagon Alley - Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes,' he said in a loud voice. 'Our new premises!'

'Special discounts to Hogwarts students who swear they're going to use our products to get rid of this old bat,' added George, pointing at Professor Umbridge.

'STOP THEM!' shrieked Umbridge, but it was too late. As the Inquisitorial Squad closed in, Fred and George kicked off from the floor, shooting fifteen feet into the air, the iron peg swinging dangerously below. Fred looked across the hall at the poltergeist bobbing on his level above the crowd.

'Give her hell from us, Peeves.'

And Peeves, who Harry had never seen take an order from a student before, swept his belled hat from his head and sprang to a salute as Fred and George wheeled about to tumultuous applause from the students below and sped out of the open front doors into the glorious sunset.

The story of Fred and George's flight to freedom was retold so often over the next few days that Harry could tell it would soon become the stuff of Hogwarts legend: within a week, even those who had been eye-witnesses were half-convinced they had seen the twins dive-bomb Umbridge on their brooms and pelt her with Dungbombs before zooming out of the doors. In the immediate aftermath of their departure there was a great wave of talk about copying them. Harry frequently heard students saying things like, 'Honestly some days I just feel like jumping on my broom and leaving this place,' or else, 'One more lesson like that and I might just do a Weasley.'

Fred and George had made sure nobody was likely to forget them too soon. For one thing, they had not left instructions on how to remove the swamp that now filled the corridor on the fifth floor of the east wing. Umbridge and Filch had been observed trying different means of removing it but without success. Eventually the area was roped off and Filch, gnashing his teeth furiously, was given the task of punting students across it to their classrooms. Harry was certain that teachers like McGonagall or Flitwick could have removed the swamp in an instant but, just as in the case of Fred and Georges Wildfire Whiz-bangs, they seemed to prefer to watch Umbridge struggle.

Then there were the two large broom-shaped holes in Umbridge's office door, through which Fred and George's Cleansweeps had smashed to rejoin their masters. Filch fitted a new door and removed Harry's Firebolt to the dungeons where, it was rumoured, Umbridge had set an armed security troll to guard it. However, her troubles were far from over.

Inspired by Fred and George's example, a great number of students were now vying for the newly vacant positions of Troublemakers-in-Chief. In spite of the new door, somebody managed to slip a hairy-snouted Niffler into Umbridge's office, which promptly tore the place apart in its search for shiny objects, leapt on Umbridge when she entered and tried to gnaw the rings off her stubby fingers. Dungbombs and Stink Pellets were dropped so frequently in the corridors that it became the new fashion for students to perform Bubble-Head Charms on themselves before leaving lessons, which ensured them a supply of fresh air, even though it gave them all the peculiar appearance of wearing upside-down goldfish bowls on their heads.

Filch prowled the corridors with a horsewhip ready in his hands, desperate to catch miscreants, but the problem was that there were now so many of them he never knew which way to turn. The Inquisitorial Squad was attempting to help him, but odd things kept happening to its members. Warrington of the Slytherin Quidditch team reported to the hospital wing with a horrible skin complaint that made him look as though he had been coated in cornflakes; Pansy Parkinson, to Hermiones delight, missed all her lessons the following day as she had sprouted antlers.

Meanwhile, it became clear just how many Skiving Snackboxes Fred and George had managed to sell before leaving Hogwarts. Umbridge only had to enter her classroom for the students assembled there to faint, vomit, develop dangerous fevers or else spout blood from both nostrils. Shrieking with rage and frustration, she attempted to trace the mysterious symptoms to their source, but the students told her stubbornly they were suffering from 'Umbridge -itis'. After putting four successive classes in detention and failing to discover their secret, she was forced to give up and allow the bleeding, swooning, sweating and vomiting students to leave her classes in droves.

But not even the users of the Snackboxes could compete with that master of chaos, Peeves, who seemed to have taken Fred's parting words deeply to heart. Cackling madly, he soared through the school, upending tables, bursting out of blackboards, toppling statues and vases; twice he shut Mrs. Norris inside a suit of armour, from which she was rescued, yowling loudly, by the furious caretaker. Peeves smashed lanterns and snuffed out candles, juggled burning torches over the heads of screaming students, caused neatly stacked piles of parchment to topple into fires or out of windows; flooded the second floor when he pulled off all the taps in the bathrooms, dropped a bag of tarantulas in the middle of the Great Hall during breakfast and, whenever he fancied a break, spent hours at a time floating along after Umbridge and blowing loud raspberries every time she spoke.

None of the staff but Filch seemed to be stirring themselves to help her. Indeed, a week after Fred and George's departure Harry witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves, who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier, and could have sworn he heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, 'It unscrews the other way.'

To cap matters, Montague had still not recovered from his sojourn in the toilet; he remained confused and disorientated and his parents were to be observed one Tuesday morning striding up the front drive, looking extremely angry.

'Should we say something?' said Hermione in a worried voice, pressing her cheek against the Charms window so that she could see Mr and Mrs. Montague marching inside. 'About what happened to him? In case it helps Madam Pomfrey cure him?'

'Course not, he'll recover,' said Ron indifferently.

'Anyway, more trouble for Umbridge, isn't it?' said Harry in a satisfied voice.

He and Ron both tapped the teacups they were supposed to be charming with their wands. Harry's spouted four very short legs that could not reach the desk and wriggled pointlessly in midair. Ron's grew four very thin spindly legs that hoisted the cup off the desk with great difficulty, trembled for a few seconds, then folded, causing the cup to crack into two.

'Reparo,' said Hermione quickly, mending Ron's cup with a wave of her wand. That's all very well, but what if Montague's permanently injured?'

'Who cares?' said Ron irritably, while his teacup stood up drunk-enly again, trembling violently at the knees. 'Montague shouldn't have tried to take all those points from Gryffindor, should he? If you want to worry about anyone, Hermione, worry about me!'

'You?' she said, catching her teacup as it scampered happily away across the desk on four sturdy little willow-patterned legs, and replacing it in front of her. 'Why should I be worried about you?'

'When Mum's next letter finally gets through Umbridge's screening process,' said Ron bitterly, now holding his cup up while its frail legs tried feebly to support its weight, 'I'm going to be in deep trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if she's sent another Howler.'

'But -'

'It'll be my fault Fred and George left, you wait,' said Ron darkly. 'She'll say I should've stopped them leaving, I should've grabbed the ends of their brooms and hung on or something… yeah, it'll be all my fault.'

'Well, if she does say that it'll be very unfair, you couldn't have done anything! But I'm sure she won't, I mean, if it's really true they've got premises in Diagon Alley, they must have been planning this for ages.'

'Yeah, but that's another thing, how did they get premises?' said Ron, hitting his teacup so hard with his wand that its legs collapsed again and it lay twitching before him. 'It's a bit dodgy isn't it? They'll need loads of Galleons to afford the rent on a place in Diagon Alley. She'll want to know what they've been up to, to get their hands on that sort of gold.'

'Well, yes, that occurred to me, too,' said Hermione, allowing her teacup to jog in neat little circles around Harry's, whose stubby little legs were still unable to touch the desktop, 'I've been wondering whether Mundungus has persuaded them to sell stolen goods or something awful.'

'He hasn't,' said Harry curtly.

'How do you know?' said Ron and Hermione together.

'Because -' Harry hesitated, but the moment to confess finally seemed to have come. There was no good to be gained in keeping silent if it meant anyone suspected that Fred and George were criminals. 'Because they got the gold from me. I gave them my Triwizard winnings last June.'

There was a shocked silence, then Hermione's teacup jogged right over the edge of the desk and smashed on the floor.

'Oh, Harry, you didn't!' she said.

'Yes, I did,' said Harry mutinously. 'And I don't regret it, either. I didn't need the gold and they'll be great at running a joke shop.'

'But this is excellent!' said Ron, looking thrilled. 'It's all your fault, Harry - Mum can't blame me at all! Can I tell her?'

'Yeah, I suppose you'd better,' said Harry dully, "specially if she thinks they're receiving stolen cauldrons or something.'

Hermione said nothing at all for the rest of the lesson, but Harry had a shrewd suspicion that her self-restraint was bound to crack before long. Sure enough, once they had left the castle for break and were standing around in the weak May sunshine, she fixed Harry with a beady eye and opened her mouth with a determined air.

Harry interrupted her before she had even started.

'It's no good nagging me, it's done,' he said firmly. 'Fred and George have got the gold - spent a good bit of it, too, by the sounds of it - and I can't get it back from them and I don't want to. So save your breath, Hermione.'

'I wasn't going to say anything about Fred and George!' she said in an injured voice.

Ron snorted disbelievingly and Hermione threw him a very dirty look.

'No, I wasn't!' she said angrily. 'As a matter of fact, I was going to ask Harry when he's going to go back to Snape and ask for more Occlumency lessons!'

Harry's heart sank. Once they had exhausted the subject of Fred and George's dramatic departure, which admittedly had taken many hours, Ron and Hermione had wanted to hear news of Sirius. As Harry had not confided in them the reason he had wanted to talk to Sirius in the first place, it had been hard to think of what to tell them; he had ended up saying, truthfully, that Sirius wanted Harry to resume Occlumency lessons. He had been regretting this ever since; Hermione would not let the subject drop and kept reverting to it when Harry least expected it.

'You can't tell me you've stopped having funny dreams,' Hermione said now, 'because Ron told me you were muttering in your sleep again last night.'

Harry threw Ron a furious look. Ron had the grace to look ashamed of himself.

'You were only muttering a bit,' he mumbled apologetically. 'Something about “just a bit further”.'

'I dreamed I was watching you lot play Quidditch,' Harry lied brutally. 'I was trying to get you to stretch out a bit further to grab the Quaffle.'

Ron's ears went red. Harry felt a kind of vindictive pleasure; he had not, of course, dreamed anything of the sort.

Last night, he had once again made the journey along the Department of Mysteries corridor. He had passed through the circular room, then the room full of clicking and dancing light, until he found himself again inside that cavernous room full of shelves on which were ranged dusty glass spheres.

He had hurried straight towards row number ninety-seven, turned left and run along it… it had probably been then that he had spoken aloud… just a bit further… for he felt his conscious self struggling to wake… and before he had reached the end of the row, he had found himself lying in bed again, gazing up at the canopy of his four-poster.

'You are trying to block your mind, aren't you?' said Hermione, looking beadily at Harry. 'You are keeping going with your Occlumency?'

'Of course I am,' said Harry, trying to sound as though this question was insulting, but not quite meeting her eye. The truth was he was so intensely curious about what was hidden in that room full of dusty orbs, that he was quite keen for the dreams to continue.

The problem was that with just under a month to go until the exams and every free moment devoted to revision, his mind seemed so saturated with information when he went to bed he found it very difficult to get to sleep at all; and when he did, his overwrought brain presented him most nights with stupid dreams about the exams. He also suspected that part of his mind - the part that often spoke in Hermione's voice — now felt guilty on the occasions it strayed down that corridor ending in the black door, and sought to wake him before he could reach the journeys end.

'You know,' said Ron, whose ears were still flaming red, 'if Montague doesn't recover before Slytherin play Hufflepuff, we might be in with a chance of winning the Cup.'

'Yeah, I's'pose so,' said Harry, glad of a change of subject.

'I mean, we've won one, lost one - if Slytherin lose to Hufflepuff next Saturday -'

'Yeah, that's right,' said Harry, losing track of what he was agreeing to. Cho Chang had just walked across the courtyard, determinedly not looking at him.

*

The final match of the Quidditch season, Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw, was to take place on the last weekend of May. Although Slytherin had been narrowly defeated by Hufflepuff in their last match, Gryffindor were not daring to hope for victory, due mainly (though of course nobody said it to him) to Ron's abysmal goal-keeping record. He, however, seemed to have found a new optimism.

'I mean, I can't get any worse, can I?' he told Harry and Hermione grimly over breakfast on the morning of the match. 'Nothing to lose now, is there?'

'You know,' said Hermione, as she and Harry walked down to the pitch a little later in the midst of a very excitable crowd, 'I think Ron might do better without Fred and George around. They never exactly gave him a lot of confidence.'

Luna Lovegood overtook them with what appeared to be a live eagle perched on top of her head.

'Oh, gosh, I forgot!' said Hermione, watching the eagle flapping its wings as Luna walked serenely past a group of cackling and pointing Slytherins. 'Cho will be playing, won't she?'

Harry, who had not forgotten this, merely grunted.

They found seats in the topmost row of the stands. It was a fine, clear day; Ron could not wish for better, and Harry found himself hoping against hope that Ron would not give the Slytherins cause for more rousing choruses of 'Weasley is our King'.

Lee Jordan, who had been very dispirited since Fred and George had left, was commentating as usual. As the teams zoomed out on to the pitch he named the players with something less than his usual gusto.