Chapter Twenty-Two: The Snitch, The Spy
The Gryffindors all looked forward to their first lesson with Firenze. Lavender and Parvati, who had been crying when Trelawney was sacked, were now eagerly anticipating their next class at breakfast.
"I thought you two were all upset that Trelawney had gone?" Dean asked in confusion.
"We are!" Lavender assured him. "We went up to her office to see her, we took her some daffodils—not the honking ones that Sprout's got, nice ones…"
"How is she?" Neville questioned her.
"Not very good, poor thing," Lavender replied sympathetically. "She was crying and saying she'd rather leave the castle forever than stay here if Umbridge is still here, and I don't blame her. Umbridge was horrible to her, wasn't she?"
Angelina, who had heard the last bit of their conversation, chimed in, "And I've got a feeling Umbridge has only just started being horrible."
"Impossible," Ron scoffed, tucking into a large plate of eggs and bacon. "She can't get any worse than she's been already."
"No," Dean retorted. "Angelina's right. Umbridge'll certainly be in a foul mood—after Dumbledore appointed Firenze without her knowledge."
"And another part-human, too," Neville agreed. "Did you see her face when she saw Firenze?"
Ron shrugged nonchalantly and stuffed his mouth. Angelina leveled him a stare of disgust before deeming him too unscrupulous for attention and turned back to converse with Alicia Spinnet.
After breakfast the Gryffindor fifth years left together for Divination.
"Aren't we going up to North Tower?" Ron asked, looking puzzled, as Parvati bypassed the marble staircase.
Parvati looked scornfully over her shoulder.
"How d'you expect Firenze to climb that ladder?" Dean snorted with derision. "We're in classroom eleven now, it was on the notice board yesterday."
Classroom elven was on the ground floor, in the corridor leading off the Entrance Hall on the opposite side of the Great Hall. It was known to be one of the classrooms that were never used regularly, and that it therefore had the slightly neglected feeling of a cupboard or storeroom. When they entered it, however, they found themselves standing in the middle of a forest clearing.
"What the—?"
The classroom floor had become springily mossy and trees were growing out of it; their leafy branches fanned across the ceiling and windows, so that the room was full of slanting shafts of soft, dappled, green light. The students who had already arrived were sitting on the earthy floor with their backs resting against tree trunks or boulders, arms wrapped around their knees or folded tightly across their chests, looking rather nervous. In the middle of the room, where there were no trees, stood Firenze.
When the door was finally closed and the last student had sat down on a tree stump beside the wastepaper basket Firenze gestured around the room.
"Professor Dumbledore has kindly arranged this classroom for us," he said, when everyone had settled down, "in imitation of my natural habitat. I would have preferred to teach you in the Forbidden Forest, which was—until Monday—my home…but this is not possible."
"Please—er—sir—" Parvati said breathlessly, raising her hand, "why not? We've been in there with Hagrid, we're not frightened!"
"It is not a question of your bravery," Firenze replied, "but of my position. I can no longer return to the forest. My herd has banished me."
"Herd?" Lavender asked, confused. "What—oh!" Comprehension dawned on her face. "There are more of you?" she asked, stunned.
"Did Hagrid breed you, like the thestrals?" Dean asked eagerly.
Firenze turned his head very slowly to face Dean, who had realized how offensive that had sounded.
"I didn't—I meant—sorry," he finished in a hushed voice.
"Centaurs are not playthings of humans," Firenze responded quietly. There was a pause, then Parvati raised her hand again.
"Please, sir…why have the other centaurs banished you?"
"Because I agreed to work for Dumbledore," Firenze told them. "They see this as a betrayal of our kind."
"Let us begin," Firenze said after a pause. He swished his long palomino tail, raised his hand toward the leafy canopy above then lowered it slowly, and as he did so, the light in the room dimmed, so that they now seemed to be sitting in a forest clearing by twilight, and stars emerged upon the ceiling. There were oohs and gasps and Ron said audibly, "Blimey!"
"Lie back on the floor," Firenze instructed in his calm voice, "and observe th heavens. Here it is written, for those who can see, th fortune of our races."
The students stretched out on their backs and gazed upward. A twinkling red star winked from overhead.
"I know that you have learned the names of the planets and their moons in Astronomy," said Firenze's calm voice, "and that you have mapped the stars' progress through the heavens. Centaurs have unraveled the mysteries of these movements over centuries. Our findings teach us that the future may be glimpsed in the sky above us…"
"Professor Trelawney taught us about Astrology!" Parvati exclaimed excitedly, raising her hand out in front of her so that it stuck up in the air as she lay on her back. "Mars causes accidents and burns and things like that, and when it makes an angle to Saturn, like now:-she drew a right angle in the air above her—"that means that people need to be extra careful when handling hot things—"
"That," Firenze stated calmly, "is human nonsense."
Parvati's hand fell limply to her side.
"Trivial hurts, tiny human accidents," Firenze said as his hooves thudded over the mossy floor. "These are no more significant than ants scurrying to the wide universe, and are unaffected by planetary movements."
"Professor Trelawney—" Parvati began in a hurt and indignant voice.
"—is a human," Firenze interrupted simply. "And is therefore blinkered and fettered by the limitations of your kind."
Several people were offended at that.
"Sybill Trelawney may have Seen, I do not know," Firenze continued, and his tail swished again as he walked up and down before them, "but she wastes her time, in the main, on the self-flattering nonsense humans call fortune-telling. I, however, am here to explain the wisdom of centaurs, which is impersonal and impartial. We watch the skies for the great tides of evil or change that are sometimes marked there. It may take ten years to be sure of what we are seeing."
Firenze pointed to the red star to Dean's right.
"In the past decade, the indications have been that Wizard-king is living through nothing more than a brief calm between two wars. Mars, bringer of battle, shines brightly above us, suggesting that the fight must break out again soon. How soon, centaurs may attempt to divine by the burning of certain herbs and leaves, by the observation of fume and flame…"
It was the most unusual lesson any of them had ever attended. The did indeed burn sage and mallowsweet there on the classroom floor, and Firenze told them to look for certain shapes and symbols in the pungent fumes, but he seemed perfectly unconcerned that not one of them could see any of the signs he described, telling them that humans were hardly ever good at this, that it took centaurs years and years to become competent, and finished by telling them that it was foolish to put too much faith in such things anyway, because even centaurs read them wrongly. He was nothing like any human teacher Dean had ever had. His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even centaurs' knowledge, was foolproof.
"He's not very definite on anything, is he?" Ron asked Seamus in a low voice, as they put out their mallowsweet fire. "I mean, I could do with a few more details about this war we're about to have, couldn't you?"
The bell rang righto outside the classroom door and everyone jumped; most had completely forgotten they were still inside the castle, quite convinced that they were really in the forest. The class filed out, looking slightly perplexed. Ron and Seamus were on the pint of following them when Firenze called, "Ron Weasley."
Ron turned. The centaur advanced a little toward him. Seamus hesitated.
"You may stay," Firenze told him. "But close the door, please."
Seamus hastened to obey.
"Ron Weasley, you are a friend of Hagrid's, are you not?" the centaur questioned.
"Yes," Ron replied.
"Then give him a warning from me. His attempt is not working. He would so better to abandon it."
"His attempt is not working?" Ron repeated blankly.
"And he would do better to abandon it," Firenze finished, nodding. "I would warn Hagrid myself, but I am banished—it would be unwise for me to go too near the forest now—Hagrid has enough troubles without a centaurs' battle."
"But—what's Hagrid attempting to do?" Ron asked weakly.
Firenze looked at him impassively.
"Hagrid has recently rendered me a great service, and he has long since earned my respect for the care he shows all living creatures. I shall not betray his secret. But he must be brought to his senses. The attempt is not working. Tell him, Ron Weasley. Good day to you."
Ron had trouble catching Hagrid at a time where he could relay Firenze's message. Umbridge was now always present in every single lesson. As a dull March blurred into a blustery April, Ron finally managed it by pretending he had lost his copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and doubling back with Seamus after class one day. When he passed on the message, Hagrid gazed at him for a moment through his puffy, blackened eyes, apparently taken back. Then he seemed to pull himself together.
"Nice bloke, Firenze," he said gruffly, "but he don' know what he's talkin' abou' on this. The attemp's comin' on fine."
"Hagrid, what're you up to?" Ron asked curiously. "If Umbridge finds out you're doing something you shouldn't—"
"There's things more importan' than keepin' a job," Hagrid replied, though his hands shook slightly as he said this and a basin full of knarl droppings crashed to the floor. "Don' worry abou' me, Ron, jus' get along now, there's a good lad…"
Ron had no choice but to leave Hagrid mopping up the dung all over his floor. He trudged his way back to the castle, pulling the collar of his shirt up so that his ears weren't rubbed raw by the ever persistent wind. When he made it into the castle, he rubbed his hands together, attempting to warm them up.
What he saw when he paused there was Harish Blake looking this way and that as he crossed the Entrance Hall and started down the steps of the dungeons. The twins were with him and, after he had looked around, they began to converse too quietly to hear. Ron could not help but notice how shady the Death Eater want-to-be was acting. Dinner was already going on, so it was unusual for anyone to leave so early.
"What do you think they were talking about?" Ron asked Seamus, already directing his feet toward the dungeons.
Seamus sighed and rubbed his face.
"I don't know," he replied. "But—come on, Ron. Spying? I don't think that's necessary."
"You can go if you want," Ron said. "But I want to know what they're talking about."
Seamus nodded his thanks and walked off towards the Great Hall. Ron stayed still for a moment, surprised. He had not expected his friend to turn down an adventure. Then, Ron's curiosity got the better of him and he hurried to go down the steps to the dungeons.
Harish and the twins were a great deal ahead of him, but the staircase was long enough that Ron could still see them. He sped up, trying his best to remain as quiet as possible.
Then, Ron panicked. How was he supposed to get into the Slytherin common room unrecognized? Thinking past, he took off his Gryffindor badge and stowed it in his pocket. Then, he pulled his Chudley Cannons hat out of his bag and pulled it on his head, almost to his eyes. By the time he had finished that, he was only directly behind his brothers.
He stopped short as Harish halted the twins, and slipped through a tapestry that was along the side of the staircase. Ron hastened to follow them. They walked down another staircase, this one narrower, and went through another tapestry doorway.
They went to the end of that corridor, and turned into another one that ended in a blank wall. Harish walked straight up to the wall and muttered, "Aconite."
The wall slid down into the ground and allowed the four boys passage. Luckily, as dinner had only just started, the common room was empty except for the four of them. Careful to stay behind them where they couldn't see him, Ron dove behind a couch and listened as the three of them raised their voices loud enough to hear.
"Still," Fred groaned. "I don't understand why we have to leave dinner quite so early."
"Yeah," George agreed. "I only just managed to get all my food down when you took us out."
"And I didn't even get a chance to grab seconds!" Fred wailed.
"We are the leaders of the DA," Harish replied with a groan. "That means we have to get there first."
"But it starts at seven!" both twins protested.
"And the Room of Requirement is situated on the seventh floor," Harish retorted, "and might I add we are three levels below ground floor? I just wanted to drop off my things before we head over there."
There was a thud as Harish most likely deposited his bookbag in a chair.
"Happy now?" Harish asked.
"Not until I get my seconds," Fred grumbled.
They continued bickering, their voices growing fainter until they disappeared altogether as the entrance to the common room closed again. Ron waited a few seconds, reveling in what he had just found out. Blake was leading a secret organization, and they had a meeting that night at seven on the seventh floor!
Ron hopped up and left the common room with a mission; he needed to tell someone about the army they were inevitably building.
They had finally started work on Patronuses in the DA meetings, which everyone had been very keen to practice, though as Harish kept reminding them, producing a Patronus in the middle of a brightly lit classroom when they were not under any threat was very different to producing it when confronted by something like a dementor.
"Oh, don't be such a killjoy," Alicia Spinnet said brightly. "They're so pretty!"
"They are not supposed to be pretty, they are supposed to protect you," Harish informed her impatiently. "What we really need is a boggart or something; that's how I taught myself, I tried to conjure a Patronus while the boggart was pretending to be a dementor—"
"Blimey, Harish," Dean remarked. "I didn't know you taught yourself."
"Yes, I did," Harish replied. "Now, try again."
Neville, Harish noted, was having trouble with the charm. His face was screwed up in concentration, but only feeble wisps of silver smoke issued from the tip of his wand.
"You need to think of something happy," Harish reminded the room.
"I'm trying," Neville said miserably, who was trying so hard his round face was actually shining with sweat.
Meanwhile Hermione's Patronus, a silver otter, was gamboling around her.
"They are sort of nice, aren't they?" she asked fondly.
The door of the Room of Requirement opened and a sandy head peeked in, looking mildly nervous. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.
"Seamus?" Dean asked. "What're you doing here?"
Seamus, not looking at anyone, mumbled, "You all best get out of here."
"What?" Dean asked in confusion.
Everyone in the room displayed some sort of confusion or alarm.
"Why?" Harish demanded.
Seamus shuffled his feet.
"Ron—he—well, I told him not to, but—well…Umbridge is coming. She knows about you guys, and she knows how to get in here."
Harish was shocked.
"What're you lot waiting for?" Fred shouted. "RUN!"
People darted for the door, and instantly Harish started shouting, "Wait! Stop!"
He climbed up onto a chair and blew his whistle. Draco, whose hand was on the doorknob, paused.
"We need to go about this in a calm, orderly fashion," Harish panted. "I know it looks bad, but it's only ten to nine. If any of you are caught, you won't be out of bounds. You all need to find a place to go, no more than three at a time, and get there. Preferably not your common rooms—those are too far—and don't run! If you are caught out of breath, it will make you seem suspicious. Now go!"
And Draco pulled Ginny out of the room. They waited a few seconds and Harish let the next group, the Hufflepuffs leave. Then the Gryffindors went, followed by the rest of the Slytherins. Finally it was only Harish, the twins, and Seamus.
Harish sent the twins on ahead to the Owlry.
"I appreciate your warning," Harish said to Seamus before leaving the Room of Requirement.
He walked as fast as possible while seeming as normal as possible, heading for the bathrooms. He could pretend he had been in there the whole time if he could just reach it—
"AAARGH!"
Something caught him around the ankles and he fell flat on his face. Someone behind him was laughing. He rolled over onto his back to see Umbridge walking serenely towards him, smiling widely.
"Stand up, Blake!" she sang happily.
Harish got to his feet, glaring at her. He had never seen Umbridge so happy. She seized his arm in a vicelike grip. Initially, Harish would have cast some spectacular spells and gotten away from there as quick as possible, but he deemed that at this moment it was best to play the innocent.
"You can come with me to headmaster's office, Blake."
They were at the stone gargoyle within minutes. Harish wondered how many of the others had been caught as Umbridge exclaimed, "Fizzing Whizbee!"
The stone gargoyle jumped aside, the wall behind split open, and they ascended the moving stone staircase, They reached the polished door with the griffin knocker, but Umbridge did not bother to knock. Instead, she strode straight inside, still holding Harish tight.
The office was full of people. Dumbledore was sitting behind his desk, his expression serene, the tips of his long fingers together. McGonagall stood rigidly beside him, her face extremely tense. Cornelius Fudge was rocking backward and forward on his toes beside the fire, apparently torn between being pleased and shocked. Kingsley Shacklebolt and a tough-looking wizard with very short, wiry hair were positioned on either side of the door like guards, and the freckled, bespectacled form of Percy Weasley hovered excitedly beside the wall, a quill and a heavy scroll of parchment in his hands, apparently poised to take notes.
The portraits of old headmasters and mistresses were not shamming sleep that night. All of them were watching what was happening below, alert and serious. As Harish entered, a few flitted into neighboring frames and whispered urgently into their neighbors' ears.
Harish pulled himself free of Umbridge's grasp as the door swung shut behind them. Fudge was glaring at him with a kind of vicious satisfaction upon his face.
"Well," he said. "Well, well, well…"
Harish replied with the most superior look he could muster, sticking his nose innocently in the air and looking at Fudge down it. His heart drummed madly in his chest, but his brain was oddly cool and clear.
"He was heading back to the dungeons," Umbridge said. There was an indecent excitement in her voice, the same callous pleasure she had displayed while watching Trelawney dissolve in misery in the entrance hall. It was almost a shame having such malic wasted on the Minister instead of being put to good use in Voldemort's ranks.
"I expect you know why you're here?" Fudge asked.
"No," Harish replied firmly.
"I beg your pardon?" Fudge asked.
"No," Harish repeated.
"You don't know why you're here?"
"No, I do not."
Fudge looked incredulously from Harish to Umbridge.
"So you have no idea," Fudge confirmed in a voice that was positively sagging with sarcasm, "why Professor Umbridge has brought you to this office? You are not aware that you have broken any school rules?"
"School rules?" Harish parroted. "No."
"Or any Ministry decrees?" Fudge amended angrily.
"Not, that I'm aware of," Harish replied blandly.
His heart was still hammering very fast. It was definitely worth toying with Fudge, watching his blood pressure rise slowly.
"So it's news to you, is it," Fudge said, his voice now thick with anger, "that an illegal student organization has been discovered within this school?"
Harish paused, contemplating his answer.
"No," he responded with.
"What do you mean by that?" Fudge exclaimed, positively quivering.
"I think, Minister," Umbridge interrupted silkily from behind Harish, "we might make better progress if I fetch our informant."
"Yes, yes, I do," Fudge agreed, nodding, and he glanced maliciously at Dumbledore as Umbridge left the room. "There's nothing like a good witness, is there, Dumbledore?"
"Nothing at all, Cornelius," Dumbledore concurred calmly, inclining his head.
There was a wait of several minutes, in which no one looked at each other, then Harish heard the door open behind him. Umbridge moved past him into the room, gripping by the shoulder Ron, who was staring at the ground as though a spot there greatly interested him.
"Come on, son, there's no need to be frightened," Umbridge said softly. Ron's face was still angled at the floor, but he shot her a reproachful look as she continued, "it's quite all right now. You have done the right thing. The Minister is very pleased with you. This is Ron Weasley, Minister," she added, looking up at Fudge. "I'm sure you know his brother."
Harish glanced over at Percy, who was scribbling excitedly, his eyes alight and his chest puffed up in pride.
"Jolly good, jolly good!" Fudge said heartily. "Just like his brother, eh?"
But it seemed that this was the last thing Ron wanted to hear. He had been looking irresolutely into the corner of the room, but at these words he looked absolutely disgusted and shot Percy the dirtiest glare that had ever graced his face.
"Yes," Umbridge agreed. "Now, why don't you tell the Minister—"
Ron shook his head profusely and mumbled, "I can't."
"Oh, very well, I'll tell him," Umbridge snapped. She hitched her sickly smile back onto her face and said, "Well, Minister, Mister Weasley here came to my office shortly after dinner this evening and told me he had something he wanted to tell me. He said that if I proceeded to a secret room on the seventh floor, sometimes known as the Room of Requirement, I would find out something to my advantage. He practically blurted out all the details; that there was going to be a meeting at seven o'clock, hosted by Harish Blake and Weasley's twin brothers."
"Well, now," Fudge said, fixing Ron with a fatherly look. "It was very noble of you, son, coming to tell Professor Umbridge, you did exactly the right thing. Now, will you tell me what happened at this meeting? What was its purpose? Who else was there?"
"I don't know," Ron mumbled. "They didn't say."
"Perhaps I could be of some help," Harish said finally. He reached into his robes and the others started forward, thinking he was grabbing his wand, but halted at the sight of a folded slip of parchment resting between his fingers.
"What is that?" Fudge asked with a mixture of impatience and curiousity.
"A permit," Harish replied, unfolding it. "Shall I read it to you?" He cleared his throat before reading aloud, "'Harish Blake has been permitted to start a study group, purposed for passing OWL and NEWT exams, by the Wizarding Examinations Authority.' And there are a bunch of signatures."
He showed the signatures of to the others in the room.
"See?" he asked. "As I was trying to tell you before, I have not been doing anything wrong."
Umbridge looked very sour, glaring holes through Harish's slip of parchment. Beyond her, Fudge seemed to be on the point of boiling with anger. His gaze flickered from Harish to Dumbledore, whose face was completely impassive, though there was a glimmer of annoyance in his eyes.
"May I go now?" Harish asked politely.
"Tell him he can't continue, Dumbledore!" Fudge finally blurted out. "I may not be able to overrule the WEA, but certainly the headmaster…"
Dumbledore bowed his head.
"Mr. Blake," he said. "You are allowed to leave this office without punishment on one condition: you can no longer hold sessions with your study group."
"Yes, professor," Harish hissed through gritted teeth.
And with that, he left the office without a glance back