Hermione dropped her spoon and pulled toward her the sheaf of notes and maps that she and Ron had been examining when Harry had entered the kitchen.

“There’s nothing in here about navy blue robes, nothing!” she said, flipping feverishly through the pages.

“Well, does it really matter?”

“Ron, it all matters! If we’re going to get into the Ministry and not give ourselves away when they’re bound to be on the lookout for intruders, every little detail matters! We’ve been over and over this, I mean, what’s the point of all these reconnaissance trips if you aren’t even bothering to tell us—”

“Blimey, Hermione, I forget one little thing—”

“You do realize, don’t you, that there’s probably no more dangerous place in the whole world for us to be right now than the Ministry of—”

“I think we should do it tomorrow,” said Harry.

Hermione stopped dead, her jaw hanging; Ron choked a little over his soup.

“Tomorrow?” repeated Hermione. “You aren’t serious, Harry?”

“I am,” said Harry. “I don’t think we’re going to be much better prepared than we are now even if we skulk around the Ministry entrance for another month. The longer we put it off, the farther away that locket could be. There’s already a good chance Umbridge has chucked it away; the thing doesn’t open.”

“Unless,” said Ron, “she’s found a way of opening it and she’s now possessed.”

“Wouldn’t make any difference to her, she was so evil in the first place,” Harry shrugged.

Hermione was biting her lip, deep in thought.

“We know everything important,” Harry went on, addressing Hermione. “We know they’ve stopped Apparition in and out of the Ministry; We know only the most senior Ministry members are allowed to connect their homes to the Floo Network now, because Ron heard those two Unspeakables complaining about it. And we know roughly where Umbridge’s office is, because of what you heard the bearded bloke saying to his mate—”

“‘I’ll be up on level one, Dolores wants to see me,’” Hermione recited immediately.

“Exactly,” said Harry. “And we know you get in using those funny coins, or tokens, or whatever they are, because I saw that witch borrowing one from her friend—”

“But we haven’t got any!”

“If the plan works, we will have,” Harry continued calmly.

“I don’t know, Harry, I don’t know… There are an awful lot of things that could go wrong, so much relies on chance…”

“That’ll be true even if we spend another three months preparing,” said Harry. “It’s time to act.”

He could tell from Ron’s and Hermione’s faces that they were scared; he was not particularly confident himself, and yet he was sure the time had come to put their plan into operation.

They had spent the previous four weeks taking it in turns to don the Invisibility Cloak and spy on the official entrance to the Ministry, which Ron, thanks to Mr. Weasley, had known since childhood. They had tailed Ministry workers on their way in, eavesdropped on their conversations, and learned by careful observation which of them could be relied upon to appear, alone, at the same time every day. Occasionally there had been a chance to sneak a Daily Prophet out of somebody’s briefcase. Slowly they had built up the sketchy maps and notes now stacked in front of Hermione.

“All right,” said Ron slowly, “let’s say we go for it tomorrow… I think it should just be me and Harry.”

“Oh, don’t start that again!” sighed Hermione. “I thought we’d settled this.”

“It’s one thing hanging around the entrances under the Cloak, but this is different, Hermione,” Ron jabbed a finger at a copy of the Daily Prophet dated ten days previously. “You’re on the list of Muggle-borns who didn’t present themselves for interrogation!”

“And you’re supposed to be dying of spattergroit at the Burrow! If anyone shouldn’t go, it’s Harry, he’s got a ten-thousand-Galleon price on his head—”

“Fine, I’ll stay here,” said Harry. “Let me know if you ever defeat Voldemort, won’t you?”

As Ron and Hermione laughed, pain shot through the scar on Harry’s forehead. His hand jumped to it. He saw Hermione’s eyes narrow, and he tried to pass off the movement by brushing his hair out of his eyes.

“Well, if all three of us go we’ll have to Disapparate separately,” Ron was saying. “We can’t all fit under the Cloak anymore.”

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Hermione was quickest; she snatched up the newspaper and began to read the accompanying story out loud.	\|	Harry’s scar was becoming more and more painful. He stood up. At once, Kreacher hurried forward.

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