She looked inquiringly at one of the Aurors, who nodded briefly, seized Harry’s upper arm, and attempted to steer him toward the barrier between platforms nine and ten.

“I can walk, thanks,” said Harry irritably, jerking his arm out of the Auror’s grip. He pushed his trolley directly at the solid barrier, ignoring his silent companion, and found himself, a second later, standing on platform nine and three-quarters, where the scarlet Hogwarts Express stood belching steam over the crowd.

Hermione and the Weasleys joined him within seconds. Without waiting to consult his grim-faced Auror, Harry motioned to Ron and Hermione to follow him up the platform, looking for an empty compartment.

“We can’t, Harry,” said Hermione, looking apologetic. “Ron and I’ve got to go to the prefects’ carriage first and then patrol the corridors for a bit.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot,” said Harry.

“You’d better get straight on the train, all of you, you’ve only got a few minutes to go,” said Mrs. Weasley, consulting her watch. “Well, have a lovely term, Ron…”

“Mr. Weasley, can I have a quick word?” said Harry, making up his mind on the spur of the moment.

“Of course,” said Mr. Weasley, who looked slightly surprised, but followed Harry out of earshot of the others nevertheless.

Harry had thought it through carefully and come to the conclusion that, if he was to tell anyone, Mr. Weasley was the right person; firstly, because he worked at the Ministry and was therefore in the best position to make further investigations, and secondly, because he thought that there was not too much risk of Mr. Weasley exploding with anger.

He could see Mrs. Weasley and the grim-faced Auror casting the pair of them suspicious looks as they moved away.

“When we were in Diagon Alley,” Harry began, but Mr. Weasley forestalled him with a grimace.

“Am I about to discover where you, Ron, and Hermione disappeared to while you were supposed to be in the back room of Fred and George’s shop?”

“How did you…?”

“Harry, please. You’re talking to the man who raised Fred and George.”

“Er… yeah, all right, we weren’t in the back room.”

“Very well, then, let’s hear the worst.”

“Well, we followed Draco Malfoy. We used my Invisibility Cloak.”

“Did you have any particular reason for doing so, or was it a mere whim?”

“Because I thought Malfoy was up to something,” said Harry, disregarding Mr. Weasley’s look of mingled exasperation and amusement. “He’d given his mother the slip and I wanted to know why.”

“Of course you did,” said Mr. Weasley, sounding resigned. “Well? Did you find out why?”

“He went into Borgin and Burkes,” said Harry, “and started bullying the bloke in there, Borgin, to help him fix something. And he said he wanted Borgin to keep something else for him. He made it sound like it was the same kind of thing that needed fixing. Like they were a pair. And…”

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Harry broke off, his eyes fixed on the window behind Hermione, his mouth open. A startling thought had just occurred to him.	\|	Harry took a deep breath.

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