They followed the Ravenclaws into the Great Hall, all looking instinctively at the staff table as they entered. Professor Grubbly-Plank was chatting to Professor Sinistra, the Astronomy teacher, and Hagrid was once again conspicuous only by his absence. The enchanted ceiling above them echoed Harry’s mood; it was a miserable rain-cloud grey.
“Dumbledore didn’t even mention how long that Grubbly-Plank woman’s staying,” he said, as they made their way across to the Gryffindor table.
“Maybe…” said Hermione thoughtfully.
“What?” said both Harry and Ron together.
“Well… maybe he didn’t want to draw attention to Hagrid not being here.”
“What d’you mean, draw attention to it?” said Ron, half-laughing. “How could we not notice?”
Before Hermione could answer, a tall black girl with long braided hair had marched up to Harry.
“Hi, Angelina.”
“Hi,” she said briskly, “good summer?” And without waiting for an answer, “Listen, I’ve been made Gryffindor Quidditch Captain.”
“Nice one,” said Harry, grinning at her; he suspected Angelina’s pep talks might not be as long-winded as Oliver Wood’s had been, which could only be an improvement.
“Yeah, well, we need a new Keeper now Oliver’s left. Tryouts are on Friday at five o’clock and I want the whole team there, all right? Then we can see how the new person’ll fit in.”
“OK,” said Harry.
Angelina smiled at him and departed.
“I’d forgotten Wood had left,” said Hermione vaguely as she sat down beside Ron and pulled a plate of toast towards her. “I suppose that will make quite a difference to the team?”
“I’s’pose,” said Harry, taking the bench opposite. “He was a good Keeper…”
“Still, it won’t hurt to have some new blood, will it?” said Ron.
With a whoosh and a clatter, hundreds of owls came soaring in through the upper windows. They descended all over the Hall, bringing letters and packages to their owners and showering the breakfasters with droplets of water; it was clearly raining hard outside. Hedwig was nowhere to be seen, but Harry was hardly surprised; his only correspondent was Sirius, and he doubted Sirius would have anything new to tell him after only twenty-four hours apart. Hermione, however, had to move her orange juice aside quickly to make way for a large damp barn owl bearing a sodden Daily Prophet in its beak.
“What are you still getting that for?” said Harry irritably, thinking of Seamus as Hermione placed a Knut in the leather pouch on the owl’s leg and it took off again. “I’m not bothering… load of rubbish.”
“It’s best to know what the enemy is saying,” said Hermione darkly, and she unfurled the newspaper and disappeared behind it, not emerging until Harry and Ron had finished eating.
“Nothing,” she said simply, rolling up the newspaper and laying it down by her plate. “Nothing about you or Dumbledore or anything.”
Professor McGonagall was now moving along the table handing out timetables.
“Look at today!” groaned Ron. “History of Magic, double Potions, Divination and double Defence Against the Dark Arts… Binns, Snape, Trelawney and that Umbridge woman all in one day! I wish Fred and George’d hurry up and get those Skiving Snackboxes sorted…”
“Do mine ears deceive me?” said Fred, arriving with George and squeezing on to the bench beside Harry. “Hogwarts prefects surely don’t wish to skive off lessons?”
“Look what we’ve got today,” said Ron grumpily, shoving his timetable under Fred’s nose. “That’s the worst Monday I’ve ever seen.”
“Fair point, little bro,” said Fred, scanning the column. “You can have a bit of Nosebleed Nougat cheap if you like.”
“Why’s it cheap?” said Ron suspiciously.
“Because you’ll keep bleeding till you shrivel up, we haven’t got an antidote yet,” said George, helping himself to a kipper.
“Cheers,” said Ron moodily, pocketing his timetable, “but I think I’ll take the lessons.”
“And speaking of your Skiving Snackboxes,” said Hermione, eyeing Fred and George beadily, “you can’t advertise for testers on the Gryffindor noticeboard.”
“Says who?” said George, looking astonished.
“Says me,” said Hermione. “And Ron.”
“Leave me out of it,” said Ron hastily.
Hermione glared at him. Fred and George sniggered.
“You’ll be singing a different tune soon enough, Hermione,” said Fred, thickly buttering a crumpet. “You’re starting your fifth year, you’ll be begging us for a Snackbox before long.”
“And why would starting fifth year mean I want a Skiving Snackbox?” asked Hermione.
“Fifth year’s O.W.L. year,” said George.
“So?”
“So you’ve got your exams coming up, haven’t you? They’ll be keeping your noses so hard to that grindstone they’ll be rubbed raw,” said Fred with satisfaction.
“Half our year had minor breakdowns coming up to O.W.L.s,” said George happily. Tears and tantrums… Patricia Stimpson kept coming over faint…”
“Kenneth Towler came out in boils, d’you remember?” said Fred reminiscently.
“That’s ’cause you put Bulbadox powder in his pyjamas,” said George.
“Oh yeah,” said Fred, grinning. “I’d forgotten… hard to keep track sometimes, isn’t it?”
“Anyway, it’s a nightmare of a year, the fifth,” said George. “If you care about exam results, anyway. Fred and I managed to keep our peckers up somehow.”
“Yeah… you got, what was it, three O.W.L.s each?” said Ron.
“Yep,” said Fred unconcernedly. “But we feel our futures lie outside the world of academic achievement.”
“We seriously debated whether we were going to bother coming back for our seventh year,” said George brightly, “now that we’ve got—”
He broke off at a warning look from Harry, who knew George had been about to mention the Triwizard winnings he had given them.
“—now that we’ve got our O.W.L.s,” George said hastily. “I mean, do we really need N.E.W.T.s? But we didn’t think Mum could take us leaving school early, not on top of Percy turning out to be the world’s biggest prat.”
“We’re not going to waste our last year here, though,” said Fred, looking afiectionately around at the Great Hall. “We’re going to use it to do a bit of market research, find out exactly what the average Hogwarts student requires from a joke shop, carefully evaluate the results of our research, then produce products to fit the demand.”
“But where are you going to get the gold to start a joke shop?” Hermione asked sceptically. “You’re going to need all the ingredients and materials—and premises too, I suppose…”
Harry did not look at the twins. His face felt hot; he deliberately dropped his fork and dived down to retrieve it. He heard Fred say overhead, “Ask us no questions and we’ll tell you no lies, Hermione. C’mon, George, if we get there early we might be able to sell a few Extendable Ears before Herbology.”
Harry emerged from under the table to see Fred and George walking away, each carrying a stack of toast.
“What did that mean?” said Hermione, looking from Harry to Ron. “‘Ask us no questions…’ Does that mean they’ve already got some gold to start a joke shop?”
“You know, I’ve been wondering about that,” said Ron, his brow furrowed. “They bought me a new set of dress robes this summer and I couldn’t understand where they got the Galleons…”
Harry decided it was time to steer the conversation out of these dangerous waters.
“D’you reckon it’s true this year’s going to be really tough? Because of the exams?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Ron. “Bound to be, isn’t it? O.W.L.s are really important, affect the jobs you can apply for and everything. We get career advice, too, later this year, Bill told me. So you can choose what N.E.W.T.s you want to do next year.”