“Well, what does that mean?” said Ron impatiently.
“I’ll tell you what it means,” said Hermione through gritted teeth. “It means the Ministry’s interfering at Hogwarts.”
There was a great clattering and banging all around them; Dumbledore had obviously just dismissed the school, because everyone was standing up ready to leave the Hall. Hermione jumped up, looking flustered.
“Ron, we’re supposed to show the first-years where to go!”
“Oh yeah,” said Ron, who had obviously forgotten. “Hey—hey, you lot! Midgets!”
“Ron!”
“Well, they are, they’re titchy…”
“I know, but you can’t call them midgets!—First-years!” Hermione called commandingly along the table. “This way, please!”
A group of new students walked shyly up the gap between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables, all of them trying hard not to lead the group. They did indeed seem very small; Harry was sure he had not appeared that young when he had arrived here. He grinned at them. A blond boy next to Euan Abercrombie looked petrified; he nudged Euan and whispered something in his ear. Euan Abercrombie looked equally frightened and stole a horrified look at Harry, who felt the grin slide off his face like Stinksap.
“See you later,” he said dully to Ron and Hermione and he made his way out of the Great Hall alone, doing everything he could to ignore more whispering, staring and pointing as he passed. He kept his eyes fixed ahead as he wove his way through the crowd in the Entrance Hall, then he hurried up the marble staircase, took a couple of concealed short cuts and had soon left most of the crowds behind.
He had been stupid not to expect this, he thought angrily as he walked through the much emptier upstairs corridors. Of course everyone was staring at him; he had emerged from the Triwizard maze two months previously clutching the dead body of a fellow student and claiming to have seen Lord Voldemort return to power. There had not been time last term to explain himself before they’d all had to go home—even if he had felt up to giving the whole school a detailed account of the terrible events in that graveyard.
Harry had reached the end of the corridor to the Gryffindor common room and come to a halt in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady before he realised that he did not know the new password.
“Er…” he said glumly, staring up at the Fat Lady, who smoothed the folds of her pink satin dress and looked sternly back at him.
“No password, no entrance,” she said loftily.
“Harry, I know it!” Someone panted up behind him and he turned to see Neville jogging towards him. “Guess what it is? I’m actually going to be able to remember it for once—” He waved the stunted little cactus he had shown them on the train. “Mimbulus mimbletonia!”
“Correct,” said the Fat Lady, and her portrait swung open towards them like a door, revealing a circular hole in the wall behind, through which Harry and Neville now climbed.
The Gryffindor common room looked as welcoming as ever, a cosy circular tower room full of dilapidated squashy armchairs and rickety old tables. A fire was crackling merrily in the grate and a few people were warming their hands by it before going up to their dormitories; on the other side of the room Fred and George Weasley were pinning something up on the noticeboard. Harry waved goodnight to them and headed straight for the door to the boys’ dormitories; he was not in much of a mood for talking at the moment. Neville followed him.
Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan had reached the dormitory first and were in the process of covering the walls beside their beds with posters and photographs. They had been talking as Harry pushed open the door but stopped abruptly the moment they saw him. Harry wondered whether they had been talking about him, then whether he was being paranoid.
“Hi,” he said, moving across to his own trunk and opening it.
“Hey, Harry,” said Dean, who was putting on a pair of pyjamas in the West Ham colours. “Good holiday?”
“Not bad,” muttered Harry, as a true account of his holiday would have taken most of the night to relate and he could not face it. “You?”
“Yeah, it was OK,” chuckled Dean. “Better than Seamus’s, anyway, he was just telling me.”
“Why, what happened, Seamus?” Neville asked as he placed his Mimbulus mimbletonia tenderly on his bedside cabinet.
Seamus did not answer immediately; he was making rather a meal of ensuring that his poster of the Kenmare Kestrels Quidditch team was quite straight. Then he said, with his back still turned to Harry, “Me mum didn’t want me to come back.”
“What?” said Harry, pausing in the act of pulling off his robes.
“She didn’t want me to come back to Hogwarts.”
Seamus turned away from his poster and pulled his own pyjamas out of his trunk, still not looking at Harry.
“But—why?” said Harry, astonished. He knew that Seamus’s mother was a witch and could not understand, therefore, why she should have come over so Dursleyish.
Seamus did not answer until he had finished buttoning his pyjamas.
“Well,” he said in a measured voice, “I suppose… because of you.”
“What d’you mean?” said Harry quickly.
His heart was beating rather fast. He felt vaguely as though something was closing in on him.
“Well,” said Seamus again, still avoiding Harry’s eye, “she… er… well, it’s not just you, it’s Dumbledore, too…”
“She believes the Daily Prophet?” said Harry. “She thinks I’m a liar and Dumbledore’s an old fool?”
Seamus looked up at him.
“Yeah, something like that.”
Harry said nothing. He threw his wand down on to his bedside table, pulled off his robes, stuffed them angrily into his trunk and pulled on his pyjamas. He was sick of it; sick of being the person who is stared at and talked about all the time. If any of them knew, if any of them had the faintest idea what it felt like to be the one all these things had happened to… Mrs. Finnigan had no idea, the stupid woman, he thought savagely.
He got into bed and made to pull the hangings closed around him, but before he could do so, Seamus said, “Look… what did happen that night when… you know, when… with Cedric Diggory and all?”
Seamus sounded nervous and eager at the same time. Dean, who had been bending over his trunk trying to retrieve a slipper, went oddly still and Harry knew he was listening hard.
“What are you asking me for?” Harry retorted. “Just read the Daily Prophet like your mother, why don’t you? That’ll tell you all you need to know.”
“Don’t you have a go at my mother,” Seamus snapped.
“I’ll have a go at anyone who calls me a liar,” said Harry.
“Don’t talk to me like that!”
“I’ll talk to you how I want,” said Harry, his temper rising so fast he snatched his wand back from his bedside table. “If you’ve got a problem sharing a dormitory with me, go and ask McGonagall if you can be moved… stop your mummy worrying—”
“Leave my mother out of this, Potter!”
“What’s going on?”
Ron had appeared in the doorway. His wide eyes travelled from Harry, who was kneeling on his bed with his wand pointing at Seamus, to Seamus, who was standing there with his fists raised.
“He’s having a go at my mother!” Seamus yelled.
“What?” said Ron. “Harry wouldn’t do that—we met your mother, we liked her…”
“That’s before she started believing every word the stinking Daily Prophet writes about me!” said Harry at the top of his voice.
“Oh,” said Ron, comprehension dawning across his freckled face. “Oh… right.”