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At once, Hermione Granger’s voice seemed to fill his head, shrill and panicky.

“Your scar hurt? Harry, that’s really serious… Write to Professor Dumbledore! And I’ll go and check Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions… Maybe there’s something in there about curse scars…”

Yes, that would be Hermione’s advice: Go straight to the headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult a book. Harry stared out of the window at the inky blue black sky. He doubted very much whether a book could help him now. As far as he knew, he was the only living person to have survived a curse like Voldemort’s; it was highly unlikely, therefore, that he would find his symptoms listed in Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions. As for informing the headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full length wizard’s robes, and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion onto his long crooked nose. Wherever Dumbledore was, though, Harry was sure that Hedwig would be able to find him; Harry’s owl had never yet failed to deliver a letter to anyone, even without an address. But what would he write?

Dear Professor Dumbledore, Sorry to bother you, but my scar hurt this morning. Yours sincerely, Harry Potter.

Even inside his head the words sounded stupid.

And so he tried to imagine his other best friend, Ron Weasley’s, reaction, and in a moment, Ron’s red hair and long nosed, freckled face seemed to swim before Harry, wearing a bemused expression.

“Your scar hurt? But… but You-Know-Who can’t be near you now, can he? I mean… you’d know, wouldn’t you? He’d be trying to do you in again, wouldn’t be? I dunno, Harry, maybe curse scars always twinge a bit… I’ll ask Dad…”

Mr. Weasley was a fully qualified wizard who worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office at the Ministry of Magic, but he didn’t have any particular expertise in the matter of curses, as far as Harry knew. In any case, Harry didn’t like the idea of the whole Weasley family knowing that he, Harry, was getting jumpy about a few moments’ pain. Mrs. Weasley would fuss worse than Hermione, and Fred and George, Ron’s sixteen year old twin brothers, might think Harry was losing his nerve. The Weasleys were Harry’s favorite family in the world; he was hoping that they might invite him to stay any time now (Ron had mentioned something about the Quidditch World Cup), and he somehow didn’t want his visit punctuated with anxious inquiries about his scar.

Harry kneaded his forehead with his knuckles. What he really wanted (and it felt almost shameful to admit it to himself) was someone like—someone like a parent: an adult wizard whose advice he could ask without feeling stupid, someone who cared about him, who had had experience with Dark Magic…

And then the solution came to him. It was so simple, and so obvious, that he couldn’t believe it had taken so long—Sirius.

Harry leapt up from the bed, hurried across the room, and sat down at his desk; he pulled a piece of parchment toward him, loaded his eagle feather quill with ink, wrote Dear Sirius, then paused, wondering how best to phrase his problem, still marveling at the fact that he hadn’t thought of Sirius straight away. But then, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising—after all, he had only found out that Sirius was his godfather two months ago.

There was a simple reason for Sirius’s complete absence from Harry’s life until then—Sirius had been in Azkaban, the terrifying wizard jail guarded by creatures called Dementors, sightless, soul sucking fiends who had come to search for Sirius at Hogwarts when he had escaped. Yet Sirius had been innocent—the murders for which he had been convicted had been committed by Wormtail, Voldemort’s supporter, whom nearly everybody now believed dead. Harry, Ron, and Hermione knew otherwise, however; they had come face to face with Wormtail only the previous year, though only Professor Dumbledore had believed their story.

For one glorious hour, Harry had believed that he was leaving the Dursleys at last, because Sirius had offered him a home once his name had been cleared. But the chance had been snatched away from him—Wormtail had escaped before they could take him to the Ministry of Magic, and Sirius had had to flee for his life. Harry had helped him escape on the back of a hippogriff called Buckbeak, and since then, Sirius had been on the run. The home Harry might have had if Wormtail had not escaped had been haunting him all summer. It had been doubly hard to return to the Dursleys knowing that he had so nearly escaped them forever.

Nevertheless, Sirius had been of some help to Harry, even if he couldn’t be with him. It was due to Sirius that Harry now had all his school things in his bedroom with him. The Dursleys had never allowed this before; their general wish of keeping Harry as miserable as possible, coupled with their fear of his powers, had led them to lock his school trunk in the cupboard under the stairs every summer prior to this. But their attitude had changed since they had found out that Harry had a dangerous murderer for a godfather—for Harry had conveniently forgotten to tell them that Sirius was innocent.

Harry had received two letters from Sirius since he had been back at Privet Drive. Both had been delivered, not by owls (as was usual with wizards), but by large, brightly colored tropical birds. Hedwig had not approved of these flashy intruders; she had been most reluctant to allow them to drink from her water tray before flying off again. Harry, on the other hand, had liked them; they put him in mind of palm trees and white sand, and he hoped that, wherever Sirius was (Sirius never said, in case the letters were intercepted), he was enjoying himself. Somehow, Harry found it hard to imaging Dementors surviving for long in bright sunlight, perhapse that was why Sirius had gone South. Sirius’s letters, which were now hidden beneath the highly useful loose floorboards under Harry’s bed, sounded cheerful, and in both of them he had reminded Harry to call on him if ever Harry needed to. Well, he needed to right now, all right…

Harry’s lamp seemed to grow dimmer as the cold gray light that precedes sunrise slowly crept into the room. Finally, when the sun had risen, when his bedroom walls had turned gold, and when sounds of movement could be heard from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia’s room, Harry cleared his desk of crumpled pieces of parchment and reread his finished letter.

...

Читайте також:

1. A blank silence greeted Hermione’s words. She looked around at all the faces upturned to her, rather disconcerted.
2. A bright silver light appeared right ahead of him, moving through the trees. Whatever the source, it was moving soundlessly. The light seemed simply to drift toward him.
3. A cold male voice rang across the courtroom.
4. A few of the centaurs looked worried now. Hermione, however, gave a gasp.
5. A few sparks shot out of the end of his wand, which was still pointed at Black’s face. Hermione fell silent.
6. A lamp flickered on. It was Hermione Granger, wearing a pink bathrobe and a frown.
7. A look of cruel satisfaction on his face, Voldemort straightened up, threw back his head, and stared around at the dark graveyard.
8. A loud rattling noise behind them announced Hermione’s reappearance with the box of S.P.E.W. badges.
9. A seam had split on Hermione’s bag. Harry wasn’t surprised; he could see that it was crammed with at least a dozen large and heavy books.
10. Aberforth Dumbledore stood blocking the corridor ahead, his wand held ready.
11. ACTIVE VOICE
12. All usual pursuits were abandoned in the Gryffindor common room the night before the match. Even Hermione had put down her books.

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