Dinner in the Great Hall that night was not a pleasant experience. The news about Harry and My shouting match with Umbridge seemed to have travelled exceptionally fast even by Hogwarts standards. There were whispers all around the hall. The funny thing was that none of the whisperers seemed to mind us overhearing what they were saying about us — on the contrary, it was as though they were hoping we’d get angry and start shouting again, so that they could hear the story firsthand.
There were the one’s about me, which made me laugh a bit:
“Bit touchy about her name, I mean really!”
“What was her name again?”
“She said she’d kill Umbridge in her sleep...”
“Her and her brother, both deranged, must be genetic.”
And then there were the one’s based on Harry which made him sulk.
“He says he saw Cedric Diggory murdered. . . .”
“He reckons he duelled with You-Know-Who. . . .”
“Come off it. . . .”
“Who does he think he’s kidding?”
“Pur-lease . . .”
“What I don’t get,” said Harry in a shaking voice, laying down his knife and fork (his hands were trembling too much to hold them steady), “is why they all believed the story two months ago when Dumbledore told them. . . .”
“The thing is, Harry, I’m not sure they did,” said Hermione grimly. “Oh, let’s get out of here.”
She slammed down her own knife and fork; Ron looked sadly at his half-finished apple pie but followed suit; I picked up an apricot tart and left. People stared at us all the way out of the Hall.
“What d’you mean, you’re not sure they believed Dumbledore?” Harry asked Hermione when we reached the first-floor landing.
“Look, you don’t understand what it was like after it happened,” said Hermione quietly. “You arrived back in the middle of the lawn clutching Cedric’s dead body. . . . None of us saw what happened in the maze. . . . We just had Dumbledore’s word for it that You-Know-Who had come back and killed Cedric and fought you.” I’ve been forgotten from the story again...
“Which is the truth!” said Harry loudly as I rolled my eyes.
“I know it is, Harry, so will you please stop biting my head off?” said Hermione wearily. “It’s just that before the truth could sink in, everyone went home for the summer, where they spent two months reading about how you’re a nutcase and Dumbledore’s going senile!”
Rain pounded on the windowpanes as we strode along the empty corridors back to Gryffindor Tower.
“Mimbulus mimbletonia,” said Hermione, before the Fat Lady could ask. The portrait swung open to reveal the hole behind and the four of us scrambled back through it.
The common room was almost empty; nearly everyone was still down at dinner. Crookshanks uncoiled himself from an armchair and trotted to meet us, purring loudly, and when we took our favourite chairs at the fireside he leapt lightly into Hermione’s lap and curled up there like a furry ginger cushion. I gazed into the flames, feeling drained and exhausted.
“How can Dumbledore have let this happen?” Hermione cried suddenly, making Harry and Ron jump and me choke on the rest of my tart; Crookshanks leapt off her, looking affronted. She pounded the arms of her chair in fury, so that bits of stuffing leaked out of the holes. “How can he let that terrible woman teach us? And in our O.W.L. year too!”
