Please think over what I have said most carefully, particularly the bit about Harry Potter, and congratulations again on becoming prefect.

Your brother,

Percy

Harry looked up at Ron.

“Well,” he said, trying to sound as though he found the whole thing a joke, “if you want to—er—what is it?”—he checked Percy’s letter—“Oh yeah—‘sever ties’ with me, I swear I won’t get violent.”

“Give it back,” said Ron, holding out his hand. “He is—” Ron said jerkily, tearing Percy’s letter in half “the world’s—” he tore it into quarters “biggest—” he tore it into eighths “—git.” He threw the pieces into the fire.

“Come on, we’ve got to get this finished sometime before dawn,” he said briskly to Harry, pulling Professor Sinistra’s essay back towards him.

Hermione was looking at Ron with an odd expression on her face.

“Oh, give them here,” she said abruptly.

“What?” said Ron.

“Give them to me, I’ll look through them and correct them,” she said.

“Are you serious? Ah, Hermione, you’re a life-saver,” said Ron, “what can I—?”

“What you can say is, ‘We promise we’ll never leave our homework this late again,’” she said, holding out both hands for their essays, but she looked slightly amused all the same.

“Thanks a million, Hermione,” said Harry weakly, passing over his essay and sinking back into his armchair, rubbing his eyes.

It was now past midnight and the common room was deserted but for the three of them and Crookshanks. The only sound was that of Hermione’s quill scratching out sentences here and there on their essays and the ruffle of pages as she checked various facts in the reference books strewn across the table. Harry was exhausted. He also felt an odd, sick, empty feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with tiredness and everything to do with the letter now curling blackly in the heart of the fire.

He knew that half the people inside Hogwarts thought him strange, even mad; he knew that the Daily Prophet had been making snide allusions to him for months, but there was something about seeing it written down like that in Percy’s writing, about knowing that Percy was advising Ron to drop him and even to tell tales about him to Umbridge, that made his situation real to him as nothing else had. He had known Percy for four years, had stayed in his house during the summer holidays, shared a tent with him during the Quidditch World Cup, had even been awarded full marks by him in the second task of the Triwizard Tournament last year, yet now, Percy thought him unbalanced and possibly violent.

And with a surge of sympathy for his godfather, Harry thought Sirius was probably the only person he knew who could really understand how he felt at the moment, because Sirius was in the same situation. Nearly everyone in the wizarding world thought Sirius a dangerous murderer and a great Voldemort supporter and he had had to live with that knowledge for fourteen years…

Harry blinked. He had just seen something in the fire that could not have been there. It had flashed into sight and vanished immediately. No… it could not have been… he had imagined it because he had been thinking about Sirius…

“OK, write that down,” Hermione said to Ron, pushing his essay and a sheet covered in her own writing back to Ron, “then add this conclusion I’ve written for you.”

“Hermione, you are honestly the most wonderful person I’ve ever met,” said Ron weakly, “and if I’m ever rude to you again—”

“—I’ll know you’re back to normal,” said Hermione. “Harry, yours is OK except for this bit at the end, I think you must have misheard Professor Sinistra, Europa’s covered in ice, not mice—Harry?”

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Hermione was pointing to the nearest window. Harry and Ron both looked over. A handsome screech owl was standing on the windowsill, gazing into the room at Ron.	\|	Harry had slid off his chair on to his knees and was now crouching on the singed and threadbare hearthrug, gazing into the flames.

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