Harry checked his watch, then remembered it hadn’t been working since it had spent over an hour in the lake.
“It’s half past three,” said Hermione.
“You’d better get back to school,” Sirius said, getting to his feet. “Now listen…” He looked particularly hard at Harry. “I don’t want you lot sneaking out of school to see me, all right? Just send notes to me here. I still want to hear about anything odd. But you’re not to go leaving Hogwarts without permission; it would be an ideal opportunity for someone to attack you.”
“No one’s tried to attack me so far, except a dragon and a couple of Grindylows,” Harry said, but Sirius scowled at him.
“I don’t care… I’ll breathe freely again when this tournament’s over, and that’s not until June. And don’t forget, if you’re talking about me among yourselves, call me Snuffles, okay?”
He handed Harry the empty napkin and flask and went to pat Buckbeak good-bye. “I’ll walk to the edge of the village with you,” said Sirius, “see if I can scrounge another paper.”
He transformed into the great black dog before they left the cave, and they walked back down the mountainside with him, across the boulder strewn ground, and back to the stile. Here he allowed each of them to pat him on the head, before turning and setting off at a run around the outskirts of the village. Harry, Ron, and Hermione made their way back into Hogsmeade and up toward Hogwarts.
“Wonder if Percy knows all that stuff about Crouch?” Ron said as they walked up the drive to the castle. “But maybe he doesn’t care… It’d probably just make him admire Crouch even more. Yeah, Percy loves rules. He’d just say Crouch was refusing to break them for his own son.”
“Percy would never throw any of his family to the Dementors,” said Hermione severely.
“I don’t know,” said Ron. “If he thought we were standing in the way of his career… Percy’s really ambitious, you know…”
They walked up the stone steps into the entrance hall, where the delicious smells of dinner wafted toward them from the Great Hall.
“Poor old Snuffles,” said Ron, breathing deeply. “He must really like you, Harry… Imagine having to live off rats.”
THE MADNESS OF MR. CROUCH
Harry, Ron, and Hermione went up to the Owlery after breakfast on Sunday to send a letter to Percy, asking, as Sirius had suggested, whether he had seen Mr. Crouch lately. They used Hedwig, because it had been so long since she’d had a job. When they had watched her fly out of sight through the Owlery window, they proceeded down to the kitchen to give Dobby his new socks.