TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT 14 страница

“ Avada Kedavra’s a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic be-

hind it — you could all get your wands out now and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I’d get so much as a nosebleed. But that doesn’t matter. I’m not here to teach you how to do it.

“Now, if there’s no countercurse, why am I showing you? Because

you’ve got to know. You’ve got to appreciate what the worst is. You

don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you’re facing it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE! ” he roared, and the whole class jumped again.

“Now. . . those three curses — Avada Kedavra, Imperius, and

Cruciatus — are known as the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any one of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. That’s what you’re up against. That’s what I’ve got to teach you to fight. You need preparing. You need arm-

ing. But most of all, you need to practice constant, never-ceasing

vigilance. Get out your quills. . . copy this down. . . . ”

They spent the rest of the lesson taking notes on each of the Un- forgivable Curses. No one spoke until the bell rang — but when

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Moody had dismissed them and they had left the classroom, a tor- rent of talk burst forth. Most people were discussing the curses in awed voices — “Did you see it twitch? ” “— and when he killed it — just like that! ”

They were talking about the lesson, Harry thought, as though it had been some sort of spectacular show, but he hadn’t found it very entertaining — and nor, it seemed, had Hermione.

“Hurry up, ” she said tensely to Harry and Ron. “Not the ruddy library again? ” said Ron.

“No, ” said Hermione curtly, pointing up a side passage. “Neville. ” Neville was standing alone, halfway up the passage, staring at the stone wall opposite him with the same horrified, wide-eyed look he had worn when Moody had demonstrated the Cruciatus Curse. “Neville? ” Hermione said gently.

Neville looked around.

“Oh hello, ” he said, his voice much higher than usual. “Interest- ing lesson, wasn’t it? I wonder what’s for dinner, I’m — I’m starv- ing, aren’t you? ”

“Neville, are you all right? ” said Hermione.

“Oh yes, I’m fine, ” Neville gabbled in the same unnaturally high voice. “Very interesting dinner — I mean lesson — what’s for eating? ”

Ron gave Harry a startled look.

“Neville, what —? ”

But an odd clunking noise sounded behind them, and they turned to see Professor Moody limping toward them. All four of them fell silent, watching him apprehensively, but when he spoke, it was in a much lower and gentler growl than they had yet heard.

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“It’s all right, sonny, ” he said to Neville. “Why don’t you come up to my office? Come on. . . we can have a cup of tea. . . . ” Neville looked even more frightened at the prospect of tea with Moody. He neither moved nor spoke. Moody turned his magical eye upon Harry.

“You all right, are you, Potter? ”

“Yes, ” said Harry, almost defiantly.

Moody’s blue eye quivered slightly in its socket as it surveyed Harry. Then he said, “You’ve got to know. It seems harsh, maybe,

but you’ve got to know. No point pretending. . . well. . . come on,

Longbottom, I’ve got some books that might interest you. ”

Neville looked pleadingly at Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but they didn’t say anything, so Neville had no choice but to allow himself to be steered away, one of Moody’s gnarled hands on his shoulder.

“What was that about? ” said Ron, watching Neville and Moody turn the corner.

“I don’t know, ” said Hermione, looking pensive. “Some lesson, though, eh? ” said Ron to Harry as they set off for the Great Hall. “Fred and George were right, weren’t they? He

really knows his stuff, Moody, doesn’t he? When he did Avada

Kedavra, the way that spider just died, just snuffed it right —”

But Ron fell suddenly silent at the look on Harry’s face and didn’t speak again until they reached the Great Hall, when he said he supposed they had better make a start on Professor Trelawney’s predictions tonight, since they would take hours.

Hermione did not join in with Harry and Ron’s conversation during dinner, but ate furiously fast, and then left for the library

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again. Harry and Ron walked back to Gryffindor Tower, and Harry, who had been thinking of nothing else all through dinner, now raised the subject of the Unforgivable Curses himself. “Wouldn’t Moody and Dumbledore be in trouble with the Min- istry if they knew we’d seen the curses? ” Harry asked as they ap- proached the Fat Lady.

“Yeah, probably, ” said Ron. “But Dumbledore’s always done things his way, hasn’t he, and Moody’s been getting in trouble for years, I reckon. Attacks first and asks questions later — look at his dustbins. Balderdash. ”

The Fat Lady swung forward to reveal the entrance hole, and they climbed into the Gryffindor common room, which was crowded and noisy.

“Shall we get our Divination stuff, then? ” said Harry. “I s’pose, ” Ron groaned.

They went up to the dormitory to fetch their books and charts, to find Neville there alone, sitting on his bed, reading. He looked a good deal calmer than at the end of Moody’s lesson, though still not entirely normal. His eyes were rather red.

“You all right, Neville? ” Harry asked him.

“Oh yes, ” said Neville, “I’m fine, thanks. Just reading this book Professor Moody lent me. . . . ”

He held up the book: Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean.

“Apparently, Professor Sprout told Professor Moody I’m really good at Herbology, ” Neville said. There was a faint note of pride in his voice that Harry had rarely heard there before. “He thought I’d like this. ”

Telling Neville what Professor Sprout had said, Harry thought, had been a very tactful way of cheering Neville up, for Neville very

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rarely heard that he was good at anything. It was the sort of thing Professor Lupin would have done.

Harry and Ron took their copies of Unfogging the Future back

down to the common room, found a table, and set to work on their predictions for the coming month. An hour later, they had made very little progress, though their table was littered with bits of parchment bearing sums and symbols, and Harry’s brain was as fogged as though it had been filled with the fumes from Professor Trelawney’s fire.

“I haven’t got a clue what this lot’s supposed to mean, ” he said, staring down at a long list of calculations.

“You know, ” said Ron, whose hair was on end because of all the times he had run his fingers through it in frustration, “I think it’s back to the old Divination standby. ”

“What — make it up? ”

“Yeah, ” said Ron, sweeping the jumble of scrawled notes off the table, dipping his pen into some ink, and starting to write. “Next Monday, ” he said as he scribbled, “I am likely to develop a cough, owing to the unlucky conjunction of Mars and Jupiter. ” He looked up at Harry. “You know her — just put in loads of mis- ery, she’ll lap it up. ”

“Right, ” said Harry, crumpling up his first attempt and lobbing it over the heads of a group of chattering first years into the fire.

“Okay. . . on Monday, I will be in danger of — er — burns. ”

“Yeah, you will be, ” said Ron darkly, “we’re seeing the skrewts

again on Monday. Okay, Tuesday, I’ll. . . erm. . . ”

“Lose a treasured possession, ” said Harry, who was flicking

through Unfogging the Future for ideas.

“Good one, ” said Ron, copying it down. “Because of. . .

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erm. . . Mercury. Why don’t you get stabbed in the back by some- one you thought was a friend? ”

“Yeah. . . cool. . . ” said Harry, scribbling it down, “because. . . Venus is in the twelfth house. ”

“And on Wednesday, I think I’ll come off worst in a fight. ” “Aaah, I was going to have a fight. Okay, I’ll lose a bet. ” “Yeah, you’ll be betting I’ll win my fight. . . . ”

They continued to make up predictions (which grew steadily more tragic) for another hour, while the common room around them slowly emptied as people went up to bed. Crookshanks wan- dered over to them, leapt lightly into an empty chair, and stared in- scrutably at Harry, rather as Hermione might look if she knew they weren’t doing their homework properly.

Staring around the room, trying to think of a kind of misfortune he hadn’t yet used, Harry saw Fred and George sitting together against the opposite wall, heads together, quills out, poring over a single piece of parchment. It was most unusual to see Fred and George hidden away in a corner and working silently; they usually liked to be in the thick of things and the noisy center of attention. There was something secretive about the way they were working on the piece of parchment, and Harry was reminded of how they had sat together writing something back at the Burrow. He had thought then that it was another order form for Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, but it didn’t look like that this time; if it had been, they would surely have let Lee Jordan in on the joke. He wondered whether it had anything to do with entering the Triwizard Tournament.

As Harry watched, George shook his head at Fred, scratched out something with his quill, and said, in a very quiet voice that never-

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theless carried across the almost deserted room, “No — that sounds like we’re accusing him. Got to be careful. . . ”

Then George looked over and saw Harry watching him. Harry grinned and quickly returned to his predictions — he didn’t want George to think he was eavesdropping. Shortly after that, the twins rolled up their parchment, said good night, and went off to bed. Fred and George had been gone ten minutes or so when the por- trait hole opened and Hermione climbed into the common room carrying a sheaf of parchment in one hand and a box whose con- tents rattled as she walked in the other. Crookshanks arched his back, purring.

“Hello, ” she said, “I’ve just finished! ”

“So have I! ” said Ron triumphantly, throwing down his quill. Hermione sat down, laid the things she was carrying in an empty armchair, and pulled Ron’s predictions toward her.

“Not going to have a very good month, are you? ” she said sar- donically as Crookshanks curled up in her lap.

“Ah well, at least I’m forewarned, ” Ron yawned. “You seem to be drowning twice, ” said Hermione. “Oh am I? ” said Ron, peering down at his predictions. “I’d better change one of them to getting trampled by a rampaging hippogriff. ” “Don’t you think it’s a bit obvious you’ve made these up? ” said Hermione.

“How dare you! ” said Ron, in mock outrage. “We’ve been work- ing like house-elves here! ”

Hermione raised her eyebrows.

“It’s just an expression, ” said Ron hastily.

Harry laid down his quill too, having just finished predicting his own death by decapitation.

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“What’s in the box? ” he asked, pointing at it.

“Funny you should ask, ” said Hermione, with a nasty look at Ron. She took off the lid and showed them the contents.

Inside were about fifty badges, all of different colors, but all bearing the same letters: S. P. E. W.

“‘Spew’? ” said Harry, picking up a badge and looking at it. “What’s this about? ”

“Not spew, ” said Hermione impatiently. “It’s S-P-E-W. Stands

for the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. ”

“Never heard of it, ” said Ron.

“Well, of course you haven’t, ” said Hermione briskly, “I’ve only just started it. ”

“Yeah? ” said Ron in mild surprise. “How many members have you got? ”

“Well — if you two join — three, ” said Hermione. “And you think we want to walk around wearing badges saying ‘spew, ’ do you? ” said Ron.

“S-P-E-W! ” said Hermione hotly. “I was going to put Stop the Outrageous Abuse of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Cam- paign for a Change in Their Legal Status — but it wouldn’t fit. So that’s the heading of our manifesto. ”

She brandished the sheaf of parchment at them. “I’ve been researching it thoroughly in the library. Elf enslave- ment goes back centuries. I can’t believe no one’s done anything about it before now. ”

“Hermione — open your ears, ” said Ron loudly. “They. Like. It.

They like being enslaved! ”

“Our short-term aims, ” said Hermione, speaking even more

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loudly than Ron, and acting as though she hadn’t heard a word, “are to secure house-elves fair wages and working conditions. Our long- term aims include changing the law about non-wand use, and trying to get an elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, because they’re shockingly underrepresented. ” “And how do we do all this? ” Harry asked.

“We start by recruiting members, ” said Hermione happily. “I thought two Sickles to join — that buys a badge — and the pro- ceeds can fund our leaflet campaign. You’re treasurer, Ron — I’ve got you a collecting tin upstairs — and Harry, you’re secretary, so you might want to write down everything I’m saying now, as a record of our first meeting. ”

There was a pause in which Hermione beamed at the pair of them, and Harry sat, torn between exasperation at Hermione and amusement at the look on Ron’s face. The silence was broken, not by Ron, who in any case looked as though he was temporarily

dumbstruck, but by a soft tap, tap on the window. Harry looked

across the now empty common room and saw, illuminated by the moonlight, a snowy owl perched on the windowsill.

“Hedwig! ” he shouted, and he launched himself out of his chair and across the room to pull open the window.

Hedwig flew inside, soared across the room, and landed on the table on top of Harry’s predictions.

“About time! ” said Harry, hurrying after her.

“She’s got an answer! ” said Ron excitedly, pointing at the grubby piece of parchment tied to Hedwig’s leg.

Harry hastily untied it and sat down to read, whereupon Hed- wig fluttered onto his knee, hooting softly.

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“What does it say? ” Hermione asked breathlessly. The letter was very short, and looked as though it had been scrawled in a great hurry. Harry read it aloud:

Harry —

I’m flying north immediately. This news about your scar is the latest in a series of strange rumors that have reached me

here. If it hurts again, go straight to Dumbledore — they’re

saying he’s got Mad-Eye out of retirement, which means he’s

reading the signs, even if no one else is.

I’ll be in touch soon. My best to Ron and Hermione. Keep your eyes open, Harry.

Harry looked up at Ron and Hermione, who stared back at him.

“He’s flying north? ” Hermione whispered. “He’s coming back? ”

“Dumbledore’s reading what signs? ” said Ron, looking per- plexed. “Harry — what’s up? ”

For Harry had just hit himself in the forehead with his fist, jolt- ing Hedwig out of his lap.

“I shouldn’t’ve told him! ” Harry said furiously. “What are you on about? ” said Ron in surprise. “It’s made him think he’s got to come back! ” said Harry, now slamming his fist on the table so that Hedwig landed on the back of Ron’s chair, hooting indignantly. “Coming back, because he thinks I’m in trouble! And there’s nothing wrong with me! And I haven’t got anything for you, ” Harry snapped at Hedwig, who was clicking her beak expectantly, “you’ll have to go up to the Owlery if you want food. ”

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Hedwig gave him an extremely offended look and took off for the open window, cuffing him around the head with her out- stretched wing as she went.

“Harry, ” Hermione began, in a pacifying sort of voice. “I’m going to bed, ” said Harry shortly. “See you in the morning. ”

Upstairs in the dormitory he pulled on his pajamas and got into his four-poster, but he didn’t feel remotely tired.

If Sirius came back and got caught, it would be his, Harry’s, fault. Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut? A few seconds’ pain and he’d had to blab. . . . If he’d just had the sense to keep it to himself. . . .

He heard Ron come up into the dormitory a short while later, but did not speak to him. For a long time, Harry lay staring up at the dark canopy of his bed. The dormitory was completely silent, and, had he been less preoccupied, Harry would have realized that the absence of Neville’s usual snores meant that he was not the only one lying awake.

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arly next morning, Harry woke with a plan fully formed in his

mind, as though his sleeping brain had been working on it all night. He got up, dressed in the pale dawn light, left the dormitory without waking Ron, and went back down to the deserted common room. Here he took a piece of parchment from the table upon which his Divination homework still lay and wrote the following letter:

Dear Sirius,

I reckon I just imagined my scar hurting, I was half asleep when I wrote to you last time. There’s no point coming back, everything’s fine here. Don’t worry about me, my head feels

completely normal.

He then climbed out of the portrait hole, up through the silent castle (held up only briefly by Peeves, who tried to overturn a large

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vase on him halfway along the fourth-floor corridor), finally arriv- ing at the Owlery, which was situated at the top of West Tower. The Owlery was a circular stone room, rather cold and drafty, because none of the windows had glass in them. The floor was entirely covered in straw, owl droppings, and the regurgitated skeletons of mice and voles. Hundreds upon hundreds of owls of every breed imaginable were nestled here on perches that rose right up to the top of the tower, nearly all of them asleep, though here and there a round amber eye glared at Harry. He spotted Hedwig nestled between a barn owl and a tawny, and hurried over to her, sliding a little on the dropping-strewn floor.

It took him a while to persuade her to wake up and then to look at him, as she kept shuffling around on her perch, showing him her tail. She was evidently still furious about his lack of gratitude the previous night. In the end, it was Harry suggesting she might be too tired, and that perhaps he would ask Ron to borrow Pigwidgeon, that made her stick out her leg and allow him to tie the letter to it. “Just find him, all right? ” Harry said, stroking her back as he car- ried her on his arm to one of the holes in the wall. “Before the de- mentors do. ”

She nipped his finger, perhaps rather harder than she would or- dinarily have done, but hooted softly in a reassuring sort of way all the same. Then she spread her wings and took off into the sunrise. Harry watched her fly out of sight with the familiar feeling of un- ease back in his stomach. He had been so sure that Sirius’s reply would alleviate his worries rather than increasing them.

“That was a lie, Harry, ” said Hermione sharply over breakfast,

when he told her and Ron what he had done. “You didn’t imagine

your scar hurting and you know it. ”

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“So what? ” said Harry. “He’s not going back to Azkaban because of me. ”

“Drop it, ” said Ron sharply to Hermione as she opened her mouth to argue some more, and for once, Hermione heeded him, and fell silent.

Harry did his best not to worry about Sirius over the next cou- ple of weeks. True, he could not stop himself from looking anx- iously around every morning when the post owls arrived, nor, late at night before he went to sleep, prevent himself from seeing horri- ble visions of Sirius, cornered by dementors down some dark Lon- don street, but betweentimes he tried to keep his mind off his godfather. He wished he still had Quidditch to distract him; noth- ing worked so well on a troubled mind as a good, hard training ses- sion. On the other hand, their lessons were becoming more difficult and demanding than ever before, particularly Moody’s Defense Against the Dark Arts.

To their surprise, Professor Moody had announced that he would be putting the Imperius Curse on each of them in turn, to demonstrate its power and to see whether they could resist its ef- fects.

“But — but you said it’s illegal, Professor, ” said Hermione un- certainly as Moody cleared away the desks with a sweep of his wand, leaving a large clear space in the middle of the room. “You said — to use it against another human was —”

“Dumbledore wants you taught what it feels like, ” said Moody, his magical eye swiveling onto Hermione and fixing her with an eerie, unblinking stare. “If you’d rather learn the hard way — when someone’s putting it on you so they can control you completely — fine by me. You’re excused. Off you go. ”

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He pointed one gnarled finger toward the door. Hermione went very pink and muttered something about not meaning that she wanted to leave. Harry and Ron grinned at each other. They knew Hermione would rather eat bubotuber pus than miss such an im- portant lesson.

Moody began to beckon students forward in turn and put the Imperius Curse upon them. Harry watched as, one by one, his classmates did the most extraordinary things under its influence. Dean Thomas hopped three times around the room, singing the national anthem. Lavender Brown imitated a squirrel. Neville per- formed a series of quite astonishing gymnastics he would certainly not have been capable of in his normal state. Not one of them seemed to be able to fight off the curse, and each of them recovered only when Moody had removed it.

“Potter, ” Moody growled, “you next. ”

Harry moved forward into the middle of the classroom, into the space that Moody had cleared of desks. Moody raised his wand,

pointed it at Harry, and said, “ Imperio! ”

It was the most wonderful feeling. Harry felt a floating sensation as every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness. He stood there feeling immensely relaxed, only dimly aware of everyone watching him.

And then he heard Mad-Eye Moody’s voice, echoing in some

distant chamber of his empty brain: Jump onto the desk. . . jump

onto the desk. . . .

Harry bent his knees obediently, preparing to spring.

Jump onto the desk. . . .

Why, though? Another voice had awoken in the back of his brain.

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Stupid thing to do, really, said the voice.

Jump onto the desk. . . .

No, I don’t think I will, thanks, said the other voice, a little more firmly. . . no, I don’t really want to. . . .

Jump! NOW!

The next thing Harry felt was considerable pain. He had both jumped and tried to prevent himself from jumping — the result was that he’d smashed headlong into the desk, knocking it over, and, by the feeling in his legs, fractured both his kneecaps.

“Now, that’s more like it! ” growled Moody’s voice, and suddenly,

Harry felt the empty, echoing feeling in his head disappear. He re- membered exactly what was happening, and the pain in his knees seemed to double.

“Look at that, you lot. . . Potter fought! He fought it, and he damn near beat it! We’ll try that again, Potter, and the rest of you, pay attention — watch his eyes, that’s where you see it — very good, Potter, very good indeed! They’ll have trouble controlling

you! ”

“The way he talks, ” Harry muttered as he hobbled out of the De- fense Against the Dark Arts class an hour later (Moody had insisted on putting Harry through his paces four times in a row, until Harry could throw off the curse entirely), “you’d think we were all going to be attacked any second. ”

“Yeah, I know, ” said Ron, who was skipping on every alternate step. He had had much more difficulty with the curse than Harry, though Moody assured him the effects would wear off by lunch- time. “Talk about paranoid. . . ” Ron glanced nervously over his

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shoulder to check that Moody was definitely out of earshot and went on. “No wonder they were glad to get shot of him at the Min- istry. Did you hear him telling Seamus what he did to that witch who shouted ‘Boo’ behind him on April Fools’ Day? And when are we supposed to read up on resisting the Imperius Curse with every- thing else we’ve got to do? ”

All the fourth years had noticed a definite increase in the amount of work they were required to do this term. Professor McGonagall explained why, when the class gave a particularly loud groan at the amount of Transfiguration homework she had assigned.

“You are now entering a most important phase of your magical education! ” she told them, her eyes glinting dangerously behind her square spectacles. “Your Ordinary Wizarding Levels are draw- ing closer —”

“We don’t take O. W. L. s till fifth year! ” said Dean Thomas indignantly.

“Maybe not, Thomas, but believe me, you need all the prepara- tion you can get! Miss Granger remains the only person in this class who has managed to turn a hedgehog into a satisfactory pincush-

ion. I might remind you that your pincushion, Thomas, still curls

up in fright if anyone approaches it with a pin! ”

Hermione, who had turned rather pink again, seemed to be try- ing not to look too pleased with herself.

Harry and Ron were deeply amused when Professor Trelawney told them that they had received top marks for their homework in their next Divination class. She read out large portions of their pre- dictions, commending them for their unflinching acceptance of

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the horrors in store for them — but they were less amused when she asked them to do the same thing for the month after next; both of them were running out of ideas for catastrophes.

Meanwhile Professor Binns, the ghost who taught History of Magic, had them writing weekly essays on the goblin rebellions of the eighteenth century. Professor Snape was forcing them to re- search antidotes. They took this one seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of them before Christmas to see if their antidote worked. Professor Flitwick had asked them to read three extra books in preparation for their lesson on Summoning Charms. Even Hagrid was adding to their workload. The Blast-Ended Skrewts were growing at a remarkable pace given that nobody had yet discovered what they ate. Hagrid was delighted, and as part of their “project, ” suggested that they come down to his hut on alter- nate evenings to observe the skrewts and make notes on their ex- traordinary behavior.

“I will not, ” said Draco Malfoy flatly when Hagrid had proposed this with the air of Father Christmas pulling an extra-large toy out of his sack. “I see enough of these foul things during lessons, thanks. ”