“My dears,” said Professor Trelawney, sitting down in her winged armchair in front of the class and peering around at them all with her strangely enlarged eyes, “we have almost finished our work on planetary divination. Today, however, will be an excellent opportunity to examine the effects of Mars, for he is placed most interestingly at the present time. If you will all look this way, I will dim the lights…”
She waved her wand and the lamps went out. The fire was the only source of light now. Professor Trelawney bent down and lifted, from under her chair, a miniature model of the solar system, contained within a glass dome. It was a beautiful thing; each of the moons glimmered in place around the nine planets and the fiery sun, all of them hanging in thin air beneath the glass. Harry watched lazily as Professor Trelawney began to point out the fascinating angle Mars was making to Neptune. The heavily perfumed fumes washed over him, and the breeze from the window played across his face. He could hear an insect humming gently somewhere behind the curtain. His eyelids began to droop…
He was riding on the back of an eagle owl, soaring through the clear blue sky toward an old, ivy covered house set high on a hillside. Lower and lower they flew, the wind blowing pleasantly in Harry’s face, until they reached a dark and broken window in the upper story of the house and entered. Now they were flying along a gloomy passageway, to a room at the very end… through the door they went, into a dark room whose windows were boarded up…
Harry had left the owl’s back… he was watching, now, as it fluttered across the room, into a chair with its back to him… There were two dark shapes on the floor beside the chair… both of them were stirring…
One was a huge snake… the other was a man… a short, balding man, a man with watery eyes and a pointed nose… he was wheezing and sobbing on the hearth rug…
“You are in luck, Wormtail,” said a cold, high pitched voice from the depths of the chair in which the owl had landed. “You are very fortunate indeed. Your blunder has not ruined everything. He is dead.”
“My Lord!” gasped the man on the floor. “My Lord, I am… I am so pleased… and so sorry…”
“Nagini,” said the cold voice, “you are out of luck. I will not be feeding Wormtail to you, after all… but never mind, never mind… there is still Harry Potter…” The snake hissed. Harry could see its tongue fluttering.
“Now, Wormtail,” said the cold voice, “perhaps one more little reminder why I will not tolerate another blunder from you…”
“My Lord… no… I beg you…”
The tip of a wand emerged from around the back of the chair. It was pointing at Wormtail.
“Crucio!” said the cold voice.
Wormtail screamed, screamed as though every nerve in his body were on fire, the screaming filled Harry’s ears as the scar on his forehead seared with pain; he was yelling too… Voldemort would hear him, would know he was there…
“Harry! Harry!”
Harry opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of Professor Trelawney’s room with his hands over his face. His scar was still burning so badly that his eyes were watering. The pain had been real. The whole class was standing around him, and Ron was kneeling next to him, looking terrified.
“You all right?” he said.
“Of course he isn’t!” said Professor Trelawney, looking thoroughly excited. Her great eyes loomed over Harry, gazing at him. “What was it, Potter? A premonition? An apparition? What did you see?”
“Nothing,” Harry lied. He sat up. He could feel himself shaking. He couldn’t stop himself from looking around, into the shadows behind him; Voldemort’s voice had sounded so close…
“You were clutching your scar!” said Professor Trelawney. “You were rolling on the floor, clutching your scar! Come now, Potter, I have experience in these matters!” Harry looked up at her.
“I need to go to the hospital wing, I think,” he said. “Bad headache.”
“My dear, you were undoubtedly stimulated by the extraordinary clairvoyant vibrations of my room!” said Professor Trelawney. “If you leave now, you may lose the opportunity to see further than you have ever—”
“I don’t want to see anything except a headache cure,” said Harry.
He stood up. The class backed away. They all looked unnerved.
“See you later,” Harry muttered to Ron, and he picked up his bag and headed for the trapdoor, ignoring Professor Trelawney, who was wearing an expression of great frustration, as though she had just been denied a real treat.
When Harry reached the bottom of her stepladder, however, he did not set off for the hospital wing. He had no intention whatsoever of going there. Sirius had told him what to do if his scar hurt him again, and Harry was going to follow his advice: He was going straight to Dumbledore’s office. He marched down the corridors, thinking about what he had seen in the dream… it had been as vivid as the one that had awoken him on Privet Drive… He ran over the details in his mind, trying to make sure he could remember them… He had heard Voldemort accusing Wormtail of making a blunder… but the owl had brought good news, the blunder had been repaired, somebody was dead… so Wormtail was not going to be fed to the snake… he, Harry, was going to be fed to it instead…
Harry had walked right past the stone gargoyle guarding the entrance to Dumbledore’s office without noticing. He blinked, looked around, realized what he had done, and retraced his steps, stopping in front of it. Then he remembered that he didn’t know the password.
“Sherbet lemon?” he tried tentatively.
The gargoyle did not move.
“Okay,” said Harry, staring at it, “Pear Drop. Er—Licorice Wand. Fizzing Whizbee. Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum. Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans… oh no, he doesn’t like them, does he?… oh just open, can’t you?” he said angrily. “I really need to see him, its urgent!” The gargoyle remained immovable.
Harry kicked it, achieving nothing but an excruciating pain in his big toe.
“Chocolate Frog!” he yelled angrily, standing on one leg. “Sugar Quill! Cockroach Cluster!” The gargoyle sprang to life and jumped aside. Harry blinked.
“Cockroach Cluster?” he said, amazed. “I was only joking…”
He hurried through the gap in the walls and stepped onto the foot of a spiral stone staircase, which moved slowly upward as the doors closed behind him, taking him up to a polished oak door with a brass door knocker.
He could hear voices from inside the office. He stepped off the moving staircase and hesitated, listening.
“Dumbledore, I’m afraid I don’t see the connection, don’t see it at all!” It was the voice of the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge. “Ludo says Bertha’s perfectly capable of getting herself lost. I agree we would have expected to have found her by now, but all the same, we’ve no evidence of foul play, Dumbledore, none at all. As for her disappearance being linked with Barty Crouch’s!”
“And what do you thinks happened to Barty Crouch, Minister?” said Moody’s growling voice.
“I see two possibilities, Alastor,” said Fudge. “Either Crouch has finally cracked—more than likely, I’m sure you’ll agree, given his personal history—lost his mind, and gone wandering off somewhere—”
“He wandered extremely quickly, if that is the case, Cornelius,” said Dumbledore calmly.
“Or else—well…” Fudge sounded embarrassed. “Well, I’ll reserve judgment until after I’ve seen the place where he was found, but you say it was just past the Beauxbatons carriage? Dumbledore, you know what that woman is?”
“I consider her to be a very able headmistress—and an excellent dancer,” said Dumbledore quietly.
“Dumbledore, come!” said Fudge angrily. “Don’t you think you might be prejudiced in her favor because of Hagrid? They don’t all turn out harmless—if, indeed, you can call Hagrid harmless, with that monster fixation he’s got—”