SCARLETT: THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

Chapter 21: The lessons and the newspaper

Harry's Occlumency wasn't working. He was still having nightmares about Voldemort and Umbridge wasn't helping either, with her constant detentions and her banning Harry from Quidditch.

His latest Voldemort dream occurred, actually, the night Professor Snape first started teaching him Occlumency. Apparently, from what I've heard from Ron and Neville, Harry woke up laughing like a maniac, worrying everyone. Harry said Voldemort was thrilled about something.

The following morning I woke up to find some of the most disturbing news that I had heard for a long time. On the front page of the Daily Prophet, I read that there had been a massive breakout from Azkaban which included a whole load of Death Eaters that I would now guess were running off to find Voldemort as we spoke.

"They think that it's Sirius," Hermione said with a defeated voice as she read through the article. "They think that he was the one that got them out."

"Are you kidding me?" I asked in disbelief. "Great - I'm sure that he is going insane right now!"

"Don't you see what this means though?" Hermione asked.

We all looked at each other in question and Hermione rolled her eyes as if the answer was sitting directly in front of our faces.

"The dementors must have changed sides again," she lowered his voice. "This has to be what this is - Voldemort must have gotten to them and that is how the Death Eaters broke out!"

"It makes sense," Harry admitted. "Remember Hagrid talking about them recruiting all of the people that they had before - history is repeating itself."

"Only this time it's going to be much worse," Ron said miserably.

For the remainder of the day we attempted to keep ourselves quiet and not create any added trouble to what all was going on. The only person that seemed to be as miserable as us was Neville who must have read the article as well. But something didn't add up - why was he so upset about it?

"Are you okay?" I asked him when he began to poke at his eggs with his fork.

"I'm fine," he shrugged without making eye contact.

"You're an awful liar," I said. "Now what is it?"

"Did you read the Prophet this morning?" he asked.

"Well, I heard about the break out," I said. "But I didn't actually read it myself."

"Then you didn't hear exactly who it was that broke out, did you?" he sighed.

"Who?" I asked.

"Bellatrix Lestrange," Neville said in a low voice. "She's the one that...did that to my parents..."

I don't know why the thought hadn't occurred to me before.

"Oh," I said. "Maybe they'll catch them before they get too far..."

It felt bad coming from my mouth because I knew that it was a downright lie and I could tell that he was thinking the same thing too. Once they were out there was a very slim chance that they were getting back especially if the dementors really were working with Voldemort again.

*
Everything else that day seemed to go along fairly well considering what had happened. Not too many people seemed to be freaking out about it, so we did our best to keep a low profile so that no one would ask us anything - not that they would think we had any information on it anyway. Everything seemed to be going normally until we ran into Hagrid that day and he announced to us that Umbridge had put him on probation because of the bad report she had given to him for his inspection.

"Probation?" I said in shock. "Why would she do that?"

"I expect that she doesn't like my teaching," Hagrid sighed. "Ya should be movin' along, I think I see her over there."

Sure enough she walked around the corridor just as we began to walk away from Hagrid. Luckily enough she didn't question us, but I couldn't help but notice how proud she seemed to look today. Nothing made her happier than to make everyone around her miserable. It was so nice to have a person like her in charge of our school.

Note the sarcasm.

*

Harry has got himself a date with Cho Chang on Valentine's day. Me and Draco were in the tea shop Madam Puddifoot's when they were there, and Cho stormed out crying after something Harry had said. I rolled my eyes; Harry had never been great with girl's feelings.

Anyway, Valentine's day was great in all.