He attempted a little last-minute practice during classes that day, but it was no good. Hermione kept asking him what was wrong whenever he fell silent trying to rid himself of all thought and emotion and, after all, the best moment to empty his brain was not while teachers were firing revision questions at the class.

Resigned to the worst, he set off for Snape's office after dinner. Halfway across the Entrance Hall, however, Cho came hurrying up to him.

'Over here,' said Harry, glad of a reason to postpone his meeting with Snape, and beckoning her across to the corner of the Entrance Hall where the giant hour-glasses stood. Gryffindor's was now almost empty. 'Are you OK? Umbridge hasn't been asking you about the DA, has she?'

'Oh, no,' said Cho hurriedly. 'No, it was only: well, I just wanted to say: Harry, I never dreamed Marietta would tell:'

'Yeah, well,' said Harry moodily. He did feel Cho might have chosen her friends a bit more carefully; it was small consolation that the last he had heard, Marietta was still up in the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey had not been able to make the slightest improvement to her pimples.

'She's a lovely person really,' said Cho. 'She just made a mistake -'

Harry looked at her incredulously.

'A lovely person who made a mistake? She sold us all out, including you!'

'Well: we all got away, didn't we?' said Cho pleadingly. 'You know, her mum works for the Ministry, it's really difficult for her -'

'Ron's dad works for the Ministry too!' Harry said furiously. 'And in case you hadn't noticed, he hasn't got sneak written across his face -'

That was a really horrible trick of Hermione Granger's,' said Cho fiercely. 'She should have told us she'd jinxed that list -'

'I think it was a brilliant idea,' said Harry coldly. Cho flushed and her eyes grew brighter.

'Oh yes, I forgot - of course, if it was darling Hermione's idea -'

'Don't start crying again,' said Harry warningly.

'I wasn't going to!' she shouted.

'Yeah: well: good,' he said. I've got enough to cope with at the moment.'

'Go and cope with it then!' Cho said furiously, turning on her heel and stalking off.

Fuming, Harry descended the stairs to Snape's dungeon and, though he knew from experience how much easier it would be for Snape to penetrate his mind if he arrived angry and resentful, he succeeded in nothing but thinking of a few more things he should have said to Cho about Marietta before reaching the dungeon door.

'You're late, Potter,' said Snape coldly, as Harry closed the door behind him.

Snape was standing with his back to Harry, removing, as usual, certain of his thoughts and placing them carefully in Dumbledore's Pensieve. He dropped the last silvery strand into the stone basin and turned to face Harry.

'So,' he said. 'Have you been practising?'

'Yes,' Harry lied, looking carefully at one of the legs of Snape's desk.

'Well, we'll soon find out, won't we?' said Snape smoothly. 'Wand out, Potter.'

Harry moved into his usual position, facing Snape with the desk between them. His heart was pumping fast with anger at Cho and anxiety about how much Snape was about to extract from his mind.

'On the count of three then,' said Snape lazily. 'One - two -'

Snape's office door banged open and Draco Malfoy sped in.

'Professor Snape, sir - oh - sorry -'

Malfoy was looking at Snape and Harry in some surprise.

'It's all right, Draco,' said Snape, lowering his wand. 'Potter is here for a little remedial Potions.'

Harry had not seen Malfoy look so gleeful since Umbridge had turned up to inspect Hagrid.

'I didn't know,' he said, leering at Harry, who knew his face was burning. He would have given a great deal to be able to shout the truth at Malfoy - or, even better, to hit him with a good curse.

'Well, Draco, what is it?' asked Snape.

'It's Professor Umbridge, sir - she needs your help,' said Malfoy.

They've found Montague, sir, he's turned up jammed inside a toilet on the fourth floor.'

'How did he get in there?' demanded Snape.

'I don't know, sir, he's a bit confused.'

'Very well, very well. Potter,' said Snape, 'we shall resume this lesson tomorrow evening.'

He turned and swept from his office. Malfoy mouthed, 'Remedial Potions?' at Harry behind Snape's back before following him.

Seething, Harry replaced his wand inside his robes and made to leave the room. At least he had twenty-four more hours in which to practise; he knew he ought to feel grateful for the narrow escape, though it was hard that it came at the expense of Malfoy telling the whole school that he needed remedial Potions.

He was at the office door when he saw it: a patch of shivering light dancing on the doorframe. He stopped, and stood looking at it, reminded of something: then he remembered: it was a little like the lights he had seen in his dream last night, the lights in the second room he had walked through on his journey through the Department of Mysteries.

He turned around. The light was coming from the Pensieve sitting on Snape's desk. The silver-white contents were ebbing and swirling within. Snape's thoughts: things he did not want Harry to see if he broke through Snape's defences accidentally:

Harry gazed at the Pensieve, curiosity welling inside him: what was it that Snape was so keen to hide from Harry?

The silvery lights shivered on the wall: Harry took two steps towards the desk, thinking hard. Could it possibly be information about the Department of Mysteries that Snape was determined to keep from him?

Harry looked over his shoulder, his heart now pumping harder and faster than ever. How long would it take Snape to release Montague from the toilet? Would he come straight back to his office afterwards, or accompany Montague to the hospital wing? Surely the latter: Montague was Captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, Snape would want to make sure he was all right.

Harry walked the remaining few feet to the Pensieve and stood over it, gazing into its depths. He hesitated, listening, then pulled out his wand again. The office and the corridor beyond were completely silent. He gave the contents of the Pensieve a small prod with the end of his wand.

The silvery stuff within began to swirl very fast. Harry leaned forwards over it and saw that it had become transparent. He was, once again, looking down into a room as though through a circular window in the ceiling: in fact, unless he was much mistaken, he was looking down into the Great Hall.

His breath was actually fogging the surface of Snape's thoughts: his brain seemed to be in limbo: it would be insane to do the thing he was so strongly tempted to do: he was trembling: Snape could be back at any moment: but Harry thought of Cho's anger, of Malfoy's jeering face, and a reckless daring seized him.

He took a great gulp of breath, and plunged his face into the surface of Snape's thoughts. At once, the floor of the office lurched, tipping Harry head-first into the Pensieve:

He was falling through cold blackness, spinning furiously as he went, and then -

He was standing in the middle of the Great Hall, but the four house tables were gone. Instead, there were more than a hundred smaller tables, all facing the same way, at each of which sat a student, head bent low, scribbling on a roll of parchment. The only sound was the scratching of quills and the occasional rustle as somebody adjusted their parchment. It was clearly exam time.

Sunshine was streaming through the high windows on to the bent heads, which shone chestnut and copper and gold in the bright light. Harry looked around carefully. Snape had to be here somewhere: this was his memory:

And there he was, at a table right behind Harry. Harry stared. Snape-the-teenager had a stringy, pallid look about him, like a plant kept in the dark. His hair was lank and greasy and was flopping on to the table, his hooked nose barely half an inch from the surface of the parchment as he scribbled. Harry moved around behind Snape and read the heading of the examination paper: DEFENCE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS - ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVEL.

So Snape had to be fifteen or sixteen, around Harry's own age. His hand was flying across the parchment; he had written at least a foot more than his closest neighbours, and yet his writing was minuscule and cramped.

'Five more minutes!'

The voice made Harry jump. Turning, he saw the top of Professor Flitwick's head moving between the desks a short distance away. Professor Flitwick was walking past a boy with untidy black hair: very untidy black hair:

Harry moved so quickly that, had he been solid, he would have knocked desks flying. Instead he seemed to slide, dreamlike, across two aisles and up a third. The back of the black-haired boy's head drew nearer and: he was straightening up now, putting down his quill, pulling his roll of parchment towards him so as to reread what he had written:

Harry stopped in front of the desk and gazed down at his fifteen-year-old father.

Excitement exploded in the pit of his stomach: it was as though he was looking at himself but with deliberate mistakes. James's eyes were hazel, his nose was slightly longer than Harry's and there was no scar on his forehead, but they had the same thin face, same mouth, same eyebrows; James's hair stuck up at the back exactly as Harry's did, his hands could have been Harry's and Harry could tell that, when James stood up, they would be within an inch of each other in height.

James yawned hugely and rumpled up his hair, making it even messier than it had been. Then, with a glance towards Professor Flitwick, he turned in his seat and grinned at a boy sitting four seats behind him.

With another shock of excitement, Harry saw Sirius give James the thumbs-up. Sirius was. lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking; his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither James's nor Harry's could ever have achieved, and a girl sitting behind him was eyeing him hopefully, though he didn't seem to have noticed. And two seats along from this girl - Harry's stomach gave another pleasurable squirm - was Remus Lupin. He looked rather pale and peaky (was the full moon approaching?) and was absorbed in the exam: as he reread his answers, he scratched his chin with the end of his quill, frowning slightly.

So that meant Wormtail had to be around here somewhere, too: and sure enough, Harry spotted him within seconds: a small, mousy-haired boy with a pointed nose. Wormtail looked anxious; he was chewing his fingernails, staring down at his paper, scuffing the ground with his toes. Every now and then he glanced hopefully at his neighbours paper. Harry stared at Wormtail for a moment, then back at James, who was now doodling on a bit of scrap parchment. He had drawn a Snitch and was now tracing the letters 'L.E.'. What did they stand for?

'Quills down, please!' squeaked Professor Flitwick. That means you too, Stebbins! Please remain seated while I collect your parchment! Accio!'

Over a hundred rolls of parchment zoomed into the air and into Professor Flitwick's outstretched arms, knocking him backwards off his feet. Several people laughed. A couple of students at the front desks got up, took hold of Professor Flitwick beneath the elbows and lifted him back on to his feet.

Thank you: thank you,' panted Professor Flitwick. 'Very well, everybody, you're free to go!'

Harry looked down at his father, who had hastily crossed out the 'L.E.' he had been embellishing, jumped to his feet, stuffed his quill and the exam paper into his bag, which he slung over his back, and stood waiting for Sirius to join him.

Harry looked around and glimpsed Snape a short way away, moving between the tables towards the doors to the Entrance Hall, still absorbed in his own exam paper. Round-shouldered yet angular, he walked in a twitchy manner that recalled a spider, and his oily hair was jumping about his face.

A gang of chattering girls separated Snape from James, Sirius and Lupin, and by planting himself in their midst, Harry managed to keep Snape in sight while straining his ears to catch the voices of James and his friends.

'Did you like question ten, Moony?' asked Sirius as they emerged into the Entrance Hall.

'Loved it,' said Lupin briskly. 'Give five signs that identify the werewolf. Excellent question.'

'D'you think you managed to get all the signs?' said James in tones of mock concern.

Think I did,' said Lupin seriously, as they joined the crowd thronging around the front doors eager to get out into the sunlit grounds. 'One: he's sitting on my chair. Two: he's wearing my clothes. Three: his name's Remus Lupin.'

Wormtail was the only one who didn't laugh.

'I got the snout shape, the pupils of the eyes and the tufted tail,' he said anxiously, 'but I couldn't think what else -'

'How thick are you, Wormtail?' said James impatiently. 'You run round with a werewolf once a month -'

'Keep your voice down,' implored Lupin.

Harry looked anxiously behind him again. Snape remained close by, still buried in his exam questions - but this was Snape's memory and Harry was sure that if Snape chose to wander off in a different direction once outside in the grounds, he, Harry, would not be able to follow James any further. To his intense relief, however, when James and his three friends strode off down the lawn towards the lake, Snape followed, still poring over the exam paper and apparently with no fixed idea of where he was going. By keeping a little ahead of him, Harry managed to maintain a close watch on James and the others.

Title: Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix
Author: J.K.Rîwling
Viewed 404244 times

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