The next morning after breakfast, the fifth-year Gryffindors headed down to Hagrid’s cabin for
their first Care of Magical Creatures class. It turned out to be somewhat tamer than they had
come to expect however; Hagrid had built what looked like a chicken yard, but pecking around
it was a flock of geese. Hermione asked him what the geese were for.
“Ah,” said Hagrid. “Each o’ yer is goin’ ter have yer own goose ter take care o’, see, and we’ll
see who gets the Goose what Lays the Golden Egg.” Harry had to admit that it certainly
seemed safer than Blast-Ended Skrewts, but somewhat boring as well. Then Draco Malfoy pointed to the fenced-in paddock beside the lake.
“What’re those for?” he wanted to know. In the paddock were a dozen beautiful golden bulls,
the biggest bulls they’d ever seen. Their horns looked made of gold too, and they pawed the
ground and snorted between pausing to eat grass.
Hagrid smiled. “Sun bulls. Now, now, I know yer want to be challenged, but those’re for the
seventh years. Part o’ their takin’ the N.E.W.T.s. If I got them all worked up by the likes of
you, I’d be in a heap o’ trouble.”
“Sun bulls?” said Hermione. “What do they have to do with them?”
“They have to harness‘em and plow a field with’em. Without getting hurt.”
“But how?” Ron wanted to know; Harry thought he was probably considering whether Fred
and George might be in quite a bit of danger. The Triwizard Tournament seemed safer.
“Now, now; each boy will have a girl for a partner. They’re supposed to figure it out together.
Don’t worry about it; you lot have yer O.W.L.s ter worry about, so I didn’t want to make life
too difficult fer yeh.”
They spent the rest of their class time choosing and feeding the goose of their choice. Lavender
Brown and Crabbe were each nipped by theirs; Malfoy laughed at them both until his goose
came running at him with her wings flapping, making a strange crying sound, and he went
scrambling over the fence out of harm’s way. The entire class laughed at this, even the other
Slytherins, and Malfoy went off in high dudgeon. Hagrid didn’t stop him. Then Harry heard
Pansy Parkinson saying to Goyle, “Serves him right, too. Bigheaded prefect...I am so over
him...”
It seemed that even the other Slytherins couldn’t stand Malfoy these days, Harry thought. That
explained why he hadn’t seen him around Crabbe and Goyle much. Malfoy seemed to be taking
a page from Percy Weasley’s book of how to be the world’s most obnoxious prefect.
After Care of Magic Creatures, they headed for the greenhouses for Herbology with the
Hufflepuffs. Professor Sprout was waiting for them outside one of the greenhouses with trowels
and burlap bags, telling them to put on their dragon-hide gloves and weed the vegetable beds.
They looked at each other uncertainly. Some professors had clearly decided to pile on work for
the fifth-years; others had decided to take it easy on them. Oh well, it kind of balanced out,
Harry thought.
The students all removed their robes and rolled up their sleevesthose that had sleeves to roll
up, which Harry did not. A couple of Hufflepuff girls who hadn’t seen Sandy before screamed
when she was revealed wrapped around Harry’s bare arm, but he encouraged them to come
over and stroke her, and once they had done that, they started in with a load of questions that
Harry was unprepared for (not to mention, some of their hands were straying off onto his arm
when they were supposed to be stroking the snake). Professor Sprout ordered them to get
back to work, and Harry knelt down in the dirt, pulling weeds, feeling quite at home after the
summer, getting the same satisfaction out of it he’d had at home (although many of the weeds
here were far worse than dandelionshence the dragon-hide gloves).
When they were walking up to the castle for lunch, Hermione had a distant look on her face,
and Ron asked her what she was thinking. She looked startled and then said, “Oh, I was just
thinking back to the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg. I was trying to remember where it came
from, some fairy-tale or other...”
“It’s not from a fairy-tale; it’s real. You saw them,” said Ron.
“You know what I mean. All those fairy-tales were written by Muggles who still had some contact with the world of magic, before the wizarding world started getting so insular and
protective of itself. I mean, when I was little and my parents would read to me about ogres and
trolls and giants and elves and leprechauns and witches and wizards, they always assured me
that of course it was made up. But it wasn’t; it turns out I’m a witch, and I’ve since seen most of
those creatures and more. I know that the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg is real; I also think it
would be helpful to find which fairy-tale it appeared in. After I eat I’m”
“Going to the library,” Harry and Ron intoned in unison, then laughed. Hermione pouted at first,
then laughed with them. She linked her right arm through Ron’s left, and her left arm through
Harry’s right.
“You two know me too well,” she smiled, and they went off to lunch in high spirits, arm in arm.
It had been a good morning. When they reached the entrance hall, Colin Creevey took their
picture as he was getting ready to go into the Great Hall. That’ll be a good one, thought Harry.
Must remember to ask for a copy.
* * * * *
The day went rapidly downhill after lunch, when they had History of Magic with their only ghost
teacher, Professor Binns. Usually attentive in this class (being the only student Harry had ever
known who had memorized Hogwarts: A History) Harry was shocked to realize that
Hermione had chosen to sit in the back row so she could leaf through a book of fairy-tales
she’d borrowed from the library. He scribbled a note on a corner of parchment. Find
anything? it said.
She shook her head and mouthed the words Not yet.
She kept her head buried in the library book all during the class. By the end, practically
everyone was virtually comatose. Harry stared stupidly out the window; Seamus had his head
down on his desk and was audibly snoring; Ron was reading Othello and making notes; Dean
and Lavender and Parvati looked listless and limp. Neville was still taking notes, but more and
more slowly, as though he were a clock that needed to be wound.
They all dragged themselves out the door afterward and headed off for Divination, except for
Hermione, who had Arithmancy. Harry and Ron trudged up to Professor Trelawney’s tower,
then climbed up the silver rope ladder to the hot, dark, airless circular room where she liked to
predict Harry’s death in a variety of creative ways.
Today, she paired them up to do Tarot card readings. Harry was stuck with Parvati; Ron was
with Neville. Professor Trelawney paired with Lavender, while Dean and Seamus were put
together. Harry was supposed to do a reading for Parvati first.
“Now,” she said in a bossy tone, “I was born under Pisces with Venus rising, understand?
Now start.”
One by one, Harry laid out cards and Parvati corrected the way he positioned them or his
interpretation of them.
“No, no, that’s not the Death Card,” she said when he’d held up the Prince of Cups and talked
about someone close to her dying. This was harder than making up star charts, he thought. And
Sandy was being no help. Except that suddenly, she was; he heard her hiss, “A fish will burn.”
“A fish will burn?” Harry repeated in English. Parvati stared at him.
“Why are you saying that? Where in the cards does it say that?” She stood and looked down at
the array of cards on the table. It was almost a full minute before either Harry or Parvati noticed
that she’d put her sleeve in the candle, and her robes were smoldering, then a flame rose up and
started licking the rest of her robes. “I’m on fire!” she screamed.
Harry pulled out his wand, pointing it at her and shouting, “Pluvius!” But as soon as he said it,
Harry realized it should have been an F, Fluvius, so a stream of water would come out of his
wand, not Pluvius, for rain; the entire ceiling of the divination classroom was now raining on
everyone. They were all soaked in seconds, and the soggy cards were being blown off the
tables by unseen winds. All of the candles had been extinguished by the wind and water and it
was very dim. The water was icy cold.
“Dessicatio!” Neville shouted, pointing his wand at the ceiling. The rain stopped, and all of the
water in the room seemed to have instantly dried up.
Professor Trelawney was brushing down her robes, glaring at Harry, and said, “Thank you, Mr.
Longbottom,” without actually looking at Neville. Harry looked with respect at him; he was
having a good start to the year, thought Harry. Moody and Trelawney liked him, and Professor
Sprout always gave him full marks. Even Snape hadn’t been too hard on him in Potions the
previous day. He’d grown taller and was less round than he used to be, and his voice had
deepened as well. Harry thought it was even possible he was growing a pale mustachebut
perhaps it was too soon to tell.
“So!” Professor Trelawney said. “If Mr. Potter is done dousing us all”
“But Professor!” Parvati cried excitedly. “He predicted it. I lookedit wasn’t in the cards. He
justsaid it. Like a question.”
“Really?” Professor Trelawney looked interested. “What did he say?” He, thought Harry. He
was getting tired of being discussed as though he weren’t in the room.
“He said, ‘A fish will burn?’ Like he didn’t know what it meant. And I’m Pisces with Venus
rising, and”
“The Sight.” Trelawney came over to peer closely at Harry.
“Well, I don’t knowit just occurred to me to say it,” Harry said weakly. The other students
were staring at him. Then he heard Sandy say, “Don’t light the black candle.” Harry suddenly
scrambled for some parchment and a quill and wrote this down. Then he folded the parchment
in half twice. Professor Trelawney looked excited.
“What are you doing?” she wanted to know. Harry shook his head, handing her the parchment.
“Don’t look at that for a few minutes,” he told her. She looked perplexed.
“Very well. Mr. Finnigan, could you please get the lights?” One by one, Seamus pointed his
wand at the red candles that they had been working by, and the flames sprung into life once
more. Then he pointed at a black candle on a shelf and lit that one before Professor Trelawney
noticed. She had been waving her wand at the spilled cards, making them leap back up onto the
tables. However, as soon as the black candle was lit, a cold wind seemed to whip through the
room, scattering the cards again and making them all shiver as though they had just drunk ice
water. Trelawney whirled around, her teeth chattering, as she saw the flame sputtering on the
black candle. Pointing her wand at it, she extinguished it.
“Don’t you know,” she said to Seamus, quite irritated, “that you never light a black candle
without lighting a white candle first, to balance it?” She pointed her wand at a white candle on
the mantle, which sprung to life, and the chill air seemed to be sucked out of the room, and
Harry felt like there’d been a dementor there who’d left, and almost started to feel like someone
had put a cheering charm on him. Professor Trelawney extinguished the white candle. “That’s
quite enough,” she said. “Any more euphoria and you won’t be able to concentrate. Back to
work!” And now she took out the slip of parchment Harry had handed her, he saw her lips
moving, reading the words but making no sound, and suddenly, she sat in the chair Parvati was about to use and told her brusquely, “I’ll partner with Mr. Potter. You go with Miss Brown.”
Ron looked at Harry quizzically; Parvati looked miffed.
Professor Trelawney swept the cards back onto the table with a swish of her wand, and had
Harry cut the pack. “Your birthday?” she asked. Harry couldn’t believe how she kept
forgetting; once she had insisted that he had been born during the winter. The other partners
were dealing out cards and beginning their readings, oblivious to Harry and the professor.
“July thirty-first,” he replied. She starting placing the cards on the table before her, nodding and
gasping as she saw various messages in their arrangement.
“You had a mortal enemy,” she told him, as she had many times before. Harry groaned
inwardlyeveryone knew that. Then he realized that she said had. “He no longer wishes to be
your enemy,” she said, tapping a card with a snake on it. “This is you,” she said, tapping a card
with a winged lion. “He has seen your power andhe wishes to recruit you.” Harry looked up,
his eyes wide. “But he has withdrawn from youhe will send his servants to you instead.” She
turned over a card. “A man who betrayed your family.” Wormtail, he thought. She turned over
another card. “A man whose son is also your enemy.” Malfoy? Crabbe? Goyle? All
possibilities. “But the son” she tapped a card with a dragon on it “may not be your enemy
for much longer.” That was surprising, thought Harry. “And” she paused after turning over
another card. “your mortal enemy’s heir.” heir? Voldemort had an heir? The card depicted
some sort of raptor, a huge bird of prey.
She turned over more cards. “There are three women in your life.” Harry thought of all the girls
who’d been making him feel like an animal in the zoo. Only three? “One is an older woman, but
there is much guilt in that...you once desired her, but you are no longer interested.” Well, that
was true of Cho, he thought. “Two others: She” Trelawney tapped a card with a picture of
the winged messenger of the gods on it. “is torn between you and” Flip! went the card. “
your brother.” I don’t have a brother, Harry thought irritably. This is a such a load of dung. “
who will turn on you for taking her from him. But she” Trelawney held up the lovers card. “
she is your true love, a warrior woman, your soul matealthough you must wait for her...she will
be with another for a while, but remain pure, waiting for you. Only together can you defeat your
mortal enemy.”
Did that mean Voldemort? He could be defeated? That was good news. Harry stared at the
cards before him, trying to remember everything she’d said. “Is that all?” he asked anxiously,
forgetting that he’d thought it was ridiculous a moment before.
“Well, there are other connections. See, the woman you lust after” Harry was jolted as she
tapped the messenger card again. “is linked with the heir of your foe. She is being held
prisoner by him.” What? Harry thought. I don’t know anyone being held prisoner...and as for
lust... “And the older woman is connected to your enemy’s servant” she pointed to the card
that was not Wormtail. Was that Malfoy’s dad? he wondered again. What could Cho have to
do with him? Then she pointed out that the card that was the son (the one with the dragon on it),
the one who would not be his enemy for long, was connected to the lovers card. “Your true
love will be tornbut when she finally comes to you, he will turn on youand yet, he will also
be needed to help you defeat your foe.”
She stopped and Harry felt his head swimming. Too much information, too many people to
keep track of... “And now, the last two cards.” She put another card on what he thought of as
Wormtail’s card (he now noticed that it in fact depicted a large rat). “Another brother,” she
said. How many brothers am I supposed to have? Harry wondered. “And for him, at the hand of the traitor...” and she turned over the last card. It was the Spectre of Death.
“Death?” Harry whispered, then tried to remind himself that he didn’t have one brother, let
alone two.
“Not necessarily. This” she tapped the deadly-looking card, “can just mean a change, a
transition.” She opened her eyes wider. “Ah” she said, “and your mortal enemy will tempt
you with your most deeply-held desireit is a fourth womanyou love each other”
But she’s not my true love? Harry thought. Then how can she be my most deeply-held desire?
And what about the one I’m lusting after?
“You will be confronted with a choice. And if you do not choose wisely” suddenly, her voice
caught as she gazed at the cards. “The world as we know it will end,” she said softly.
Harry looked up at her enormous eyes behind her glasses. “What?” he heard himself saying, as
though it were somebody else. “I have to make a choice that could end the world as we know
it?” He stood up, running his hands through his hair. He pointed down at the cards. “This is
ridiculous. I don’t have any brothers. You tell me I have both a true love and another woman is
my most deeply-held desiremake up your mind! And nothing I decide could end the world as
we know it. Nothing!” He suddenly swept the cards off the table with his arm, then stood again,
panting, looking at her defiantly. He was a prefect; he wasn’t supposed to be speaking to
teachers this way. Well, at this rate, he wouldn’t be a prefect much longer...
The whole class was watching. Trelawney calmly magicked the cards back into a neat stack on
the table with a sweep of her wand. “You may go. This has been a stressful class for you. But I
forgive your outburst, because you have the Sight...” she said placidly.
Harry turned to go, shouldering his bag, but before his head disappeared from sight down the
ladder, he said loudly and firmly, “I do not have the Sight!” Then, he heard Sandy say, “A
flame-haired man will fall off a ladder...” He thought of going back and warning Ron, but
inasmuch as he’d just denied having the Sight, he thought better of it and just kept going.
He walked down the many stairs and then through winding passages to Gryffindor Tower. He
entered the common room, passed through it without seeing it, and went up to the dorm. He
was done for the day, thank god. It was still hot, so he opened a window and took off his shirt,
lounging on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Then he felt like he wanted some sound other than
the rushing in his ears, the sound of Trelawney’s voice saying The world as we know it will
end. He took his portable tape player out of his trunk and put on the headphones, made sure
the tape was rewound, and pressed play. He could see the parts that moved the tape going
round and round; he could hear a kind of hissing noise (but not Parseltongue), but no music. He
pressed the stop button. Oh, well. Hermione was always telling him that there was too much
magical interference around Hogwarts for these kinds of things to work. Magnetic tape, he
realized. And batteries: more magnetism. He knew that magic and magnets did not mix well. He
put the tape player away and leaned back again with his hands behind his head, then looked
down and watched the basilisk amulet rising and falling on his bare chest.
Why me? he thought. Why is it always me? Because deep inside, he knew that he really did
believe that he could be in a position to make a choice that could change the world. Was the
choice to join Voldemort or to fight him? He heard Moody’s voice in his head now: What
makes a person turn dark? What makes another person decide not to? When is that
crucial moment? When indeed? But, Harry thought, he would never do that. Voldemort
wanted to recruit him now, did he? He’d heard about Voldemort and the other Death Eaters
torturing people’s family members to coerce them to be Death Eaters also. Is that what he was after, coming after Ron and Hermione? Forcing me to become a Death Eater? Harry Potter,
Death Eater. It was too preposterous...Unless, Harry thought, the choice not to be one is what
would end the world as we know it...He closed his eyes and tried to imagine that his tape player
worked, tried to block the Tarot card reading out of his brain before it drove him crazy.
* * * * *
He must have dozed off from the heat of the late summer afternoon. When he woke, Hermione
was sitting on the bed next to him, shaking him. She was carrying her robes; she was obviously
hot too, her short curls were clustered around a face that looked damp and humid; her blouse
had damp wet spots under the arms and she wiped some perspiration off her forehead and
spoke in a tired voice. “Come on, Harry. We have to go to the hospital wing.” She stood to go
and he saw that there was also a damp spot on her blouse in the small of her back. “I’m just
going to change my clothes first. Why do they have to make these robes so hot and heavy?” she
said wearily, heading for the door.
“Is Ron all right?”
She turned at the doorway. “Yeah. He broke his leg, but Seamus, Dean and Neville got him to
the hospital wing okay, and Madam Pomfrey should have him mended by the time we get there.
You should know; you’ve broken your leg before.” Then she looked like she woke up.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
“Howhow did you know?”
Harry still felt like he was asleep. He pulled himself up and swung his legs over the side of the
bed while saying, “Well, he fell off the ladder leaving Trelawney’s, didn’t he?”
She still stared at him. “Yes,” she said slowly. “But you weren’t there.”
Now Harry felt as though he’d thoroughly woken up, too. “Oh, um, but I had trouble with the
ladder when I was leaving. I figured that thing was just an accident waiting to happen...”
She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “But how did you know the one who fell was Ron?”
He shrugged. “You wouldn’t be here to take me to the hospital wing if it were Seamus, Dean or
Neville, or Lavender or Parvati, either. Well, you might if it were Neville. But then Ron would
have come to get me himself, probably.” He looked at her levelly, daring her to refute his logic.
She looked dissatisfied by this explanation, still, but also looked like she’d decided she was
fighting a losing battle.
“I know it’s hot,” she said, “but you’d better put on a shirt. Not that any of the female students
would mind if you walked around like that...” She smiled at him, looking a little as she had on
Sunday night, when she stroked his jaw as they stood outside the common room. She turned
and left without another word.
Harry put on a clean shirt and pinned his prefect badge to it and left Sandy curled up on his
bedit was plenty hot, she didn’t need to be on his armand went down to the common room
where Hermione was waiting. She had also pinned her prefect badge to her clean blouse. They
walked through the corridors to the hospital wing without speaking; once, while they were
swinging their arms, their hands collided, giving Harry a shock, and he thought about reaching
out to take her hand, but then changed his mind. He increased his stride instead, and Hermione
increased her speed to keep up with him.
“Harry,” she complained, “it’s too hot to run.” She jogged for a few seconds to catch up to
him, them reached out and grabbed his hand, lacing her fingers through his. He let her,
remembering how they had held hands when she’d told him about the abduction. It seemed like
another lifetime that they were there in the Dursley’s garden, lying on the grass and talking. He slowed down and they walked together, their hands linked, up to the infirmary. Harry opened
the door with his left hand and they entered still holding hands.
Ron was lying back on a bed, propped up by many pillows but with his eyes closed. His left leg
was covered with bandages that were protecting the magical poultices that were healing his
broken bone. Harry remembered that Dick had also broken his left leg when he had ignored
Sandy’s warning about the rocks falling. Harry had wished that he had access to magical
medicine to help Dick. Now Ron had a broken leg because Harry had ignored Sandy again.
Ron opened his eyes and started to smile until he saw their linked hands.
“I found Harry taking a nap in the dorm,” Hermione told him.
“You two took a while,” he said flatly. “And you changed your clothes.”
Hermione pulled her hand out of Harry’s and went to stand on the opposite side of the bed
from Harry. “It’s hot, we were all sweaty...” she began, then stopped. That didn’t sound good,
Harry realized.
“Anyway.” Harry tried to sound brisk. “I’m sorry about all this.”
“All what? I was a great prat and fell and broke my leg. What are you sorry about?”
“Um, er, well...”
“Tell him, Harry,” Hermione said sternly. Harry looked at her.
“Tell him what?”
“All right, I will. Harry knew you were going to fall, Ron.”
“Hermione”
“What?” Ron said, incredulous. “You knew, and didn’t tell me? Waithow did you know? Oh,
god, is that why you were screaming I don’t have the Sight when you were leaving?”
“No, I was saying that because *I don’t have the Sight*!” Harry said irritably. “Hermione, stop
doing this...”
“You knew,” Hermione said. “I’m sure of it. I don’t know how you knew, but you knew...”
“You should have heard him before Trelawney dismissed him,” Ron told her. “He was all, I
don’t have any brothers. How can I have a true love and a woman who is my deepest
desire! And how can I end the world as we know it? Or something like that.”
“What were you doing?”
“Tarot readings. I’ll have to tell you two about mine later; Neville was too funny...”
She looked at Harry again now. “What did Trelawney say to you?”
Harry grimaced. “Oh, come on, Hermione, you know her. It’s all bunk. That’s why you left
Divination...”
“What did she say?”
He sighed. “She said that I had a mortal enemy who no longer wants to be my enemy.”
She looked puzzled. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s great. See, he no longer wants to be my enemy because he’s decided I’m a pretty
powerful wizard, so he wants to recruit me instead.”
Ron and Hermione stared at him. “What?” they both said at once.
“Yeah, so I figured, a Death Eater tattoo would look pretty cool with all of my new robes, and I
could maybe get an earring like that too, perhaps grow a ponytail like Bill...”
“Harry, stop! You would never do that!” Hermione said, exasperated.
“Why not? Because I want everyone who’s close to me to be tortured and murdered while I
make up my mind?” He looked at the two of them grimly. “She said he has withdrawn from me
and is sending his servants. You remember what Moody said about the Death Eaters, don’t you? About how they’re afraid of the Cruciatus Curse, so they can be even more ruthless than
Voldemort himself? Do you think I want you two being tortured?”
“But Harry, if you werehypotheticallyto become a Death Eater, what if you were told to
torture people? If you didn’t do it, you’d be tortured instead...”
“I don’t care about that. That’s just my own pain; I’ve coped with it before. I can do it again.”
“But you see, Harry,” she said pleadingly, tears starting to form in her eyes, “that’s why you
can’t be a Death Eater. Because you’d rather suffer yourself than see anyone else suffer. You’re
just not cut out for it.”
“She said I have to make a choice,” he said softly, looking at his hands. “I have to choose
wisely, or the world as we know it will end...”
She went round the bed and put her hands on his. “You will make the right choice, Harry, you
will. But you’re not going to become a Death Eater to protect us. I’d rather die first than have
that happen.”
Ron looked at him earnestly. “Me too.”
He looked back and forth between them. “Problem is, I’d rather be a Death Eater if it meant
that you two didn’t have to be tortured or die, so I guess we’re just not going to agree about
this.”
They looked blankly at him. He turned and strode toward the door of the infirmary, but as he
opened the door, he heard Hermione’s light steps behind him. He didn’t look back. When he
tried to close the door, she was there, slipping through. She closed the door and then turned
and threw her arms around his waist; he didn’t hesitate before putting his arms around her,
pillowing his cheek on the top of her head, feeling the tears escaping from his eyes into her hair.
He felt his shirt grow wet from her tears. It felt like they stood there what way for a long time,
and then finally she separated herself from him, stood on her toes to kiss his cheek, and went
running off, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.
* * * * *
“Okay, now Fred and George are getting some food from the kitchens, and Parvati and
Lavender are asking Hannah if we can borrow her Wizarding Wireless for music, andwhat
about something like balloons? Or streamers?” Ginny was ticking off a list as Harry entered the
common room. Hermione was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Hermione?” he asked her. “And have you even been to see your brother, who’s lying
in the hospital wing with a broken leg?”
She frowned at him. “What do you take me for? Of course I have. And Fred and George are
there with him now. Do you want to handle decorations?”
“Decorations? For what? And I asked you where Hermione is.”
“Neville asked her for help with his Transfiguration homework. They went to the library. He’s
the diversion. Do you think I’d plan Hermione’s surprise party with her sitting right here? I
mean, she’s had a rough summer, and I thought”
“Surprise party?”
“Harry, her birthday is on Saturday. Did you forget?” Frankly, he had forgotten that her
birthday was September ninth. “So, can you handle decorations?”
“Yeah, sure, sure,” he said distractedly, walking toward the stairs to the boys’ dorms.
“Harry!”
“What?” he said distractedly, turning.
“I thought you were looking for Hermione.”
“Oh, wellit sounds like she’s busy helping Neville. It can wait.”
She looked at him with concern. “Are you all right, Harry?”
No, I’m not all right, he thought. I just found out that I’m being recruited to be a Death Eater,
and you could be targeted, and Hermione, and Ron, and your other brothers, and your parents,
and all of my teachers...
“I’m okay,” he croaked; his throat felt very dry suddenly. It was somehow painful to look at
her, so he went up the stairs to his dorm and lay down on the bed, closing the curtains, despite
the heat. He desperately had wanted to talk to her, or to Hermione, someone, but everyone
was so busy, too busy to be concerned about whether Voldemort had another Death Eater or
not.
He picked up Sandy from the bed and hissed at her, “What should I do, Sandy?”
“Do, Harry Potter?”
“I don’t want to be a dark wizard. But I don’t want to put my friends in danger.”
“Then don’t look for it. It will come to you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. If only I had some way to go after the Death Eaters myself; then if
Voldemort didn’t have any more servants, he’d have to deal with me directly...”
“Then do that.”
“It’s not that simple!” She was being frustrating again, making her facile statements, giving
advice as though she knew anything at all about it...
I’m really cracking up now, he thought. I’m getting ready to lash out at a garden snake for not
understanding my ridiculously complicated life. He remembered holding Hermione, and all he
could think was that he wanted to hold her again, wanted to just hold her and forget about the
rest of the world....
* * * * *
Harry pushed the Tarot reading out of his mind. On Saturday after dinner, Harry and Ron were
supposed to convince Hermione to take a detour to the library so Ginny and the other
Gryffindors had a chance to get the common room ready for the party. When the time for the
party came, they both claimed to have all of the research they needed for their History of Magic
homework, and dragged her back up to the common room, confused, because they’d actually
stopped in the middle of the assignment. A week later, the password to the common room had
been changed.
“Yorkshire pudding,” Hermione said to the fat lady.
“Sounds scrumptious!” came the reply before the portrait swung open, followed by all of the
Gryffindors, including Professor McGonagall, crying, “Surprise!”
Hermione looked like she was going to faint. Ron and Harry had to help her through the portrait
hole, and then she had to hug Ginny, and Parvati, and Lavender, and everyone, until she came
back round to Ron and Harry again, and hugged both of them at once. Then someone turned on
the wireless for music, and started passing around butterbeer and plates of cake. Everyone
seemed to be laughing and talking at once. Harry watched her face; she was totally floored, had
not suspected a thing. He came up behind Ginny, putting his arm around her shoulder and
whispering to her, “Good job, Gin.” She looked at him and smiled. Why was it so hard to look
away from Ginny these days?
She leaned close to him and asked, “What did you get her?”
He’d almost forgotten. “Oh! I have to go get it!” He went dashing up the stairs; in a minute, he
was back with a wrapped package. He pulled Ron away from the punch and over to where both had cried, how private that was; it was disconcerting to suddenly have her pressed against
him in a room with other people. They moved their feet only slightly, he was hardly aware of the
music having words or a rhythm or tune, it was just a roaring in his ears as he held her and felt
her heart beating against his chest and he breathed her in.
“Hermione,” he whispered. She looked up. “I have another present for you.” She widened her
eyes, looking frightened and hopeful at the same time. “I’ve decided not to become a Death
Eater.” She smiled, her look of apprehension evaporating.
“I never seriously thought you would,” she whispered back, pillowing her head on his shoulder
again. As the song ended, he felt her trembling, and he didn’t want to let her go, but he was
suddenly aware of Ron and Ginny standing nearby, clearly paying close attention to them but
trying to pretend that they weren’t. Another slow song began. Harry knew what he had to do.
He took her by the hand and led her over to Ron, saying, “Now, the gift was from both of us; I
shouldn’t be the only one to get a dance out of it.” He put her hand in his, and Ron and
Hermione looked at each other awkwardly, before Hermione smiled in a resigned way and
dragged him out to the middle of the floor. Ron’s leg was mostly healed; he was only limping a
little.
Then Harry put his hand out to Ginny, smiling at her. “And you,” he said, “planned a great
party.” He took her out onto the floor too, pulling her too him. She chose to dance in a style
more like what they’d all done to open the Yule Ball; she kept her hand in his and put her other
hand on his shoulder, while he put his other hand in the small of her back. But after less than a
minute, he took his hand from hers and put that one on her back too, forcing her to put her
other hand on his shoulder too. She was about an inch taller than him, so they were dancing
pretty much eye to eye during the entire song, and Harry found himself with the problem of not
being able to look away from her again.
She finally was the one to look away, staring down where she could see the basilisk amulet
resting on his shirtfront. “Did you decide what animal you want to be?” she whispered to him.
He had been practicing controlling his fingernails with McGonagall every night after dinner, until
the party (she had given him the night off), and he’d told her his decision. “Yes,” he said softly.
She shivered at the breeze his breath made with his mouth so close to her ear. “Lion.” She
nodded.
“You’re training to be an Animagus, aren’t you?” she said softly next to his ear. He looked at
her in surprise. She smiled slyly. “You’ve been disappearing with McGonagall every night after
dinner. She’s an Animagus and the Transfiguration teacher, and you were asking me about
animals...it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“Sssh!” he said quietly, near her ear again; she shivered again in his arms, but she didn’t seem to
mind it. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s meant to be a surprise.”
Suddenly, Harry was aware that the music had stopped, and that people were looking at them.
Hermione and Ron weren’t touching. Hermione was peering intently at the two of them. “What
are you whispering about?” she asked, trying to sound casual. Harry reluctantly let Ginny go.
“Nothing,” he said with as blank a look on his face as he could muster. He looked at Ron, who
seemed to be trying to edge away from Hermione; when Harry had glimpsed them dancing,
there had been quite a lot of air between, more so than with any of the dancing couples he’d
seen all night. He remembered Hermione calling him an immature git. Harry knewor thought
he knewhow Ron felt about Hermione. What was he afraid of? Harry wondered. But at this
moment, having just been dancing with him, she looked like the thing she wanted most was to get away from him. Maybe I’m wrong, thought Harry. Maybe he doesn’t feel that way about
her at all, I’ve nothing to worry about.
Except that he did have something to worry about; she wouldn’t be so annoyed with Ron if she
didn’t have feelings for him. He was just making her miserable. Harry fought the urge to hit him,
as he’d wanted to when Ron had made the Othello comment. He strode over to Hermione and
quickly kissed her on the cheek.
“Well, happy birthday. I’d better go up the beanstalk here and get some sleep so I can be
awake for you to run rings around me in the morning,” he said, moving toward the stairs.
Suddenly, she was crying, “Oh! I almost forgot!” Harry turned around, wondering what was
going on. She motioned for Harry, Ron and Ginny to follow her over to the armchairs near the
fire. No one else was nearby, and the music had gotten loud again, although no one was dancing
now.
“I found the right fairy-tale!” she said in an excited whisper. “When I was in the library with
Neville and you nefarious types were planning this party.” She smiled at Ginny, who looked
confused.
“What fairy-tale?” she asked Hermione.
“Aren’t you doing the geese in Hagrid’s class?”
“No, we’re doing baby unicorns. He’s afraid that not all of the older girls will be able toget
near them,” she said, blushing, and Harry remembered that only girls who were virgins could
approach unicorns. “He said the geese were for the fifth-years. So what’s with the geese? How
are they magical creatures?”
“One of them is the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.”
Harry was going to lose it in a second, plus he was very tired. “So? Which fairy-tale is it?”
Hermione looked triumphant. “Jack and the Beanstalk!”
The three of them looked at each other and then at her. “So?” they said at the same time.
“So? I told you that fairy-tales were based on fact; Jack and the Beanstalk is practically a
primer on how to get over on a giant. There were a number of magical things that the Jack
character stole from the giant’s home, and one of them was the Goose that Laid the Golden
Egg! I think Hagrid must have made contact with the giants, and he was given the goose as a
kind of goodwill gesture...”
“Like giving a gift to an ambassador?” Ginny ventured.
“Exactly! I think it means that the giants will be on the right side; that they won’t go over to
You-Know-Who! I think Hagrid did it!”
They were all silent. Then Ron said, “What if he stole it?”
Hermione glared at him. “What?”
“What if he did what Jack did, and stole it? What if it doesn’t mean anything at all?”
They were all silent. “We do what we usually do,” said Hermione. “We confront him about it.
That’s how we found out how to subdue Fluffy...”
Ron gave a great yawn. “Well, I vote that we do it after having a long lie-in on Sunday morning.
Oh, that’s right, you two are insane,” he said, pointing at Harry and Hermione. They all
laughed.
“Actually, I will probably have a lie-in tomorrow,” Hermione said wearily. “What is it, about
two o’clock?” Harry nodded, checking his watch. When they looked up, they were surprised
to find that no one else was still in the room. They went to their respective staircases and up to
bed, all hoping that Hermione was right about Hagrid and the giants but not necessarily believing it.
* * * * *
