Chosen & Hated (HP) {Book 2 of the Wild & Free Series}

29. The Pensieve

The door of the office opened.

"Hello, Potters," said Moody. "Come in, then."

Harry and I walked inside. I had been inside Dumbledore's office once before; it was a very beautiful, circular room, lined with pictures of previous headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts, all of whom were fast asleep, their chests rising and falling gently.

Cornelius Fudge was standing beside Dumbledore's desk, wearing his usual pinstriped cloak and holding his lime-green bowler hat.

"Harry! Liana!" said Fudge jovially, moving forward. "How are you?"

"Fine," Harry and I lied.

"We were just talking about the night when Mr. Crouch turned up on the grounds," said Fudge. "It was you two who found him, was it not?"

"Yes," I said. Then, feeling it was pointless to pretend that we hadn't overheard what they had been saying, I added, "I didn't see Madame Maxime anywhere, though, and she'd have a job hiding, wouldn't she?"

Dumbledore smiled at me behind Fudge's back, his eyes twinkling.

"Yes, well," said Fudge, looking embarrassed, "we're about to go for a short walk on the grounds, Harry and Liana, if you'll excuse us... perhaps if you just go back to your class —"

"We wanted to talk to you, Professor," Harry said quickly, looking at Dumbledore, who gave him a swift, searching look.

"Wait here for me, Harry and Liana," he said. "Our examination of the grounds will not take long."

They trooped out in silence past Harry and me and closed the door. After a minute or so, I heard the clunks of Moody's wooden leg growing fainter in the corridor below. I looked around.

"Hello, Fawkes," Harry said.

Fawkes, Professor Dumbledore's phoenix, was standing on his golden perch beside the door. The size of a swan, with magnificent scarlet-and-gold plumage, he swished his long tail and blinked benignly at Harry.

Harry sat down in a chair in front of Dumbledore's desk. For several minutes, he sat and watched the old headmasters and head- mistresses snoozing in their frames, thinking about what he had just heard, and running his fingers over his scar. It had stopped hurting now.

"Do you also feel that calm in here?" I asked him and he nodded. We fell silent again.

"There is the sword of Gryffindor," Harry said after a while, pointing at a glass case that held a magnificent silver sword with large rubies set into the hilt.

Harry got up, walked across the office, and pulled open the cabinet door. I walked over to him, curious at what he was gaping at.

A shallow stone basin lay there, with odd carvings around the edge: runes and symbols that I did not recognise. The silvery light was coming from the basin's contents, which were like nothing I had ever seen before. I could not tell whether the substance was liquid or gas. It was a bright, whitish silver, and it was moving ceaselessly; the surface of it became ruffled like water be- neath wind, and then, like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made liquid — or like wind made solid — I couldn't make up my mind.

I wanted to touch it, to find out what it felt like, but nearly four years' experience of the magical world told me that sticking my hand into a bowl full of some unknown substance was a very stupid thing to do. I therefore pulled my wand out of the inside of my robes, cast a nervous at Harry, looked back at the contents of the basin, and prodded them.