He heaved a deep sigh. “Molly, I’m going to have to go into the office; this is going to take some smoothing over.”
“I’ll come with you, Father,” said Percy importantly. “Mr. Crouch will need all hands on deck. And I can give him my cauldron report in person.”
He bustled out of the kitchen. Mrs. Weasley looked most upset. “Arthur, you’re supposed to be on holiday! This hasn’t got anything to do with your office; surely they can handle this without you?”
“I’ve got to go, Molly,” said Mr. Weasley. “I’ve made things worse. I’ll just change into my robes and I’ll be off…”
“Mrs. Weasley,” said Harry suddenly, unable to contain himself, “Hedwig hasn’t arrived with a letter for me, has she?”
“Hedwig, dear?” said Mrs. Weasley distractedly. “No… no, there hasn’t been any post at all.”
Ron and Hermione looked curiously at Harry. With a meaningful look at both of them he said, “All right if I go and dump my stuff in your room, Ron?”
“Yeah… think I will too,” said Ron at once. “Hermione?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, and the three of them marched out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
“What’s up, Harry?” said Ron, the moment they had closed the door of the attic room behind them.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Harry said. “On Saturday morning, I woke up with my scar hurting again.”
Ron’s and Hermione’s reactions were almost exactly as Harry had imagined them back in his bedroom on Privet Drive. Hermione gasped and started making suggestions at once, mentioning a number of reference books, and everybody from Albus Dumbledore to Madam Pomfrey, the Hogwarts nurse. Ron simply looked dumbstruck.
“But—he wasn’t there, was he? You-Know-Who? I mean—last time your scar kept hurting, he was at Hogwarts, wasn’t he?”
“I’m sure he wasn’t on Privet Drive,” said Harry. “But I was dreaming about him… him and Peter—you know, Wormtail. I can’t remember all of it now, but they were plotting to kill… someone.”
He had teetered for a moment on the verge of saying “me,” but couldn’t bring himself to make Hermione look any more horrified than she already did.
“It was only a dream,” said Ron bracingly. “Just a nightmare.”
“Yeah, but was it, though?” said Harry, turning to look out of the window at the brightening sky. “It’s weird, isn’t it?… My scar hurts, and three days later the Death Eaters are on the march, and Voldemort’s sign’s up in the sky again.”
“Don’t—say—his—name!” Ron hissed through gritted teeth.
“And remember what Professor Trelawney said?” Harry went on, ignoring Ron. “At the end of last year?”
Professor Trelawney was their Divination teacher at Hogwarts. Hermione’s terrified look vanished as she let out a derisive snort.
“Oh Harry, you aren’t going to pay attention to anything that old fraud says?”
“You weren’t there,” said Harry. “You didn’t hear her. This time was different. I told you, she went into a trance—a real one. And she said the Dark Lord would rise again… greater and more terrible than ever before… and he’d manage it because his servant was going to go back to him… and that night Wormtail escaped.”
There was a silence in which Ron fidgeted absentmindedly with a hole in his Chudley Cannons bedspread.
“Why were you asking if Hedwig had come, Harry?” Hermione asked. “Are you expecting a letter?”
“I told Sirius about my scar,” said Harry, shrugging. “I’m waiting for his answer.”
“Good thinking!” said Ron, his expression clearing. “I bet Sirius’ll know what to do!”
“I hoped he’d get back to me quickly,” said Harry.
“But we don’t know where Sirius is… he could be in Africa or somewhere, couldn’t he?” said Hermione reasonably. “Hedwig’s not going to manage that journey in a few days.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Harry, but there was a leaden feeling in his stomach as he looked out of the window at the Hedwig free sky.
“Come and have a game of Quidditch in the orchard, Harry,” said Ron. “Come on—three on three, Bill and Charlie and Fred and George will play… You can try out the Wronski Feint…”
“Ron,” said Hermione, in an I-don’t-think-you’re-being-very-sensitive sort of voice, “Harry doesn’t want to play Quidditch right now… He’s worried, and he’s tired… We all need to go to bed…”
“Yeah, I want to play Quidditch,” said Harry suddenly. “Hang on, I’ll get my Firebolt.”
Hermione left the room, muttering something that sounded very much like “Boys.”
Neither Mr. Weasley nor Percy was at home much over the following week. Both left the house each morning before the rest of the family got up, and returned well after dinner every night.
“It’s been an absolute uproar,” Percy told them importantly the Sunday evening before they were due to return to Hogwarts. “I’ve been putting out fires all week. People keep sending Howlers, and of course, if you don’t open a Howler straight away, it explodes. Scorch marks all over my desk and my best quill reduced to cinders.”
“Why are they all sending Howlers?” asked Ginny, who was mending her copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi with Spellotape on the rug in front of the living room fire.
“Complaining about security at the World Cup,” said Percy. “They want compensation for their ruined property. Mundungus Fletcher’s put in a claim for a twelve bedroomed tent with en suite Jacuzzi, but I’ve got his number. I know for a fact he was sleeping under a cloak propped on sticks.”
Mrs. Weasley glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. Harry liked this clock. It was completely useless if you wanted to know the time, but otherwise very informative. It had nine golden hands, and each of them was engraved with one of the Weasley family’s names. There were no numerals around the face, but descriptions of where each family member might be. “Home,” “school,” and “work” were there, but there was also “traveling,” “lost,” “hospital,” “prison,” and, in the position where the number twelve would be on a normal clock, “mortal peril.”
Eight of the hands were currently pointing to the “home” position, but Mr. Weasley’s, which was the longest, was still pointing to “work.” Mrs. Weasley sighed.
“Your father hasn’t had to go into the office on weekends since the days of You-Know-Who,” she said. “They’re working him far too hard. His dinner’s going to be ruined if he doesn’t come home soon.”
“Well, Father feels he’s got to make up for his mistake at the match, doesn’t he?” said Percy. “If truth be told, he was a tad unwise to make a public statement without clearing it with his Head of Department first—”
“Don’t you dare blame your father for what that wretched Skeeter woman wrote!” said Mrs. Weasley, flaring up at once.
“If Dad hadn’t said anything, old Rita would just have said it was disgraceful that nobody from the Ministry had commented,” said Bill, who was playing chess with Ron. “Rita Skeeter never makes anyone look good. Remember, she interviewed all the Gringotts’ Charm Breakers once, and called me ‘a long haired pillock’?”
“Well, it is a bit long, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley gently. “If you’d just let me—”
“No, Mum.”
Rain lashed against the living room window. Hermione was immersed in The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4, copies of which Mrs. Weasley had bought for her, Harry, and Ron in Diagon Alley. Charlie was darning a fireproof balaclava. Harry was polishing his Firebolt, the broomstick servicing kit Hermione had given him for his thirteenth birthday open at his feet. Fred and George were sitting in a far corner, quills out, talking in whispers, their heads bent over a piece of parchment.