“Professor,” said Parvati, “do you mean . . . is it something Professor Umbridge . . . ?”
“Do not speak to me about that woman!” cried Professor Trelawney, leaping to her feet, her beads rattling and her spectacles flashing. “Kindly continue with your work!”
And she spent the rest of the lesson striding among them, tears still leaking from behind her glasses, muttering what sounded like threats under her breath.
“ . . . may well choose to leave . . . the indignity of it . . . on probation . . . we shall see . . . how she dares . . .”
“You and Umbridge have got something in common,” Harry told Hermione quietly when they met again in Defense Against the Dark Arts. “She obviously reckons Trelawney’s an old fraud too. . . . Looks like she’s put her on probation.”
Umbridge entered the room as he spoke, wearing her black velvet bow and an expression of great smugness.
“Good afternoon, class.”
“Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge,” they chanted drearily.
“Wands away, please . . .”
But there was no answering flurry of movement this time; nobody had bothered to take out their wands.
“Please turn to page thirty-four of Defensive Magical Theory and read the third chapter, entitled ‘The Case for Non-Offensive Responses to Magical Attack.’ There will be —”
“— no need to talk,” Harry, Ron, and Hermione said together under their breaths.
“No Quidditch practice,” said Angelina in hollow tones when Harry, Ron, and Hermione entered the common room that night after dinner.
“But I kept my temper!” said Harry, horrified. “I didn’t say anything to her, Angelina, I swear, I —”
“I know, I know,” said Angelina miserably. “She just said she needed a bit of time to consider.”
“Consider what?” said Ron angrily. “She’s given the Slytherins permission, why not us?”
But Harry could imagine how much Umbridge was enjoying holding the threat of no Gryffindor Quidditch team over their heads and could easily understand why she would not want to relinquish that weapon over them too soon.
“Well,” said Hermione, “look on the bright side — at least now you’ll have time to do Snape’s essay!”
“That’s a bright side, is it?” snapped Harry, while Ron stared incredulously at Hermione. “No Quidditch practice and extra Potions?”
Harry slumped down into a chair, dragged his Potions essay reluctantly from his bag, and set to work.
It was very hard to concentrate; even though he knew that Sirius was not due in the fire until much later he could not help glancing into the flames every few minutes just in case. There was also an incredible amount of noise in the room: Fred and George appeared finally to have perfected one type of Skiving Snackbox, which they were taking turns to demonstrate to a cheering and whooping crowd.
First, Fred would take a bite out of the orange end of a chew, at which he would vomit spectacularly into a bucket they had placed in front of them. Then he would force down the purple end of the chew, at which the vomiting would immediately cease. Lee Jordan, who was assisting the demonstration, was lazily vanishing the vomit at regular intervals with the same Vanishing Spell Snape kept using on Harry’s potions.
What with the regular sounds of retching, cheering, and Fred and George taking advance orders from the crowd, Harry was finding it exceptionally difficult to focus on the correct method for Strengthening Solutions. Hermione was not helping matters; the cheers and sound of vomit hitting the bottom of Fred and George’s bucket were punctuated by loud and disapproving sniffs that Harry found, if anything, more distracting.
“Just go and stop them, then!” he said irritably, after crossing out the wrong weight of powdered griffin claw for the fourth time.
“I can’t, they’re not technically doing anything wrong,” said Hermione through gritted teeth. “They’re quite within their rights to eat the foul things themselves, and I can’t find a rule that says the other idiots aren’t entitled to buy them, not unless they’re proven to be dangerous in some way, and it doesn’t look as though they are . . .”
She, Harry, and Ron watched George projectile-vomit into the bucket, gulp down the rest of the chew, and straighten up, beaming with his arms wide to protracted applause.
“You know, I don’t get why Fred and George only got three O.W.L.s each,” said Harry, watching as Fred, George, and Lee collected gold from the eager crowd. “They really know their stuff . . .”
“Oh, they only know flashy stuff that’s no real use to anyone,” said Hermione disparagingly.
“No real use?” said Ron in a strained voice. “Hermione, they’ve got about twenty-six Galleons already . . .”
It was a long while before the crowd around the Weasleys dispersed, and then Fred, Lee, and George sat up counting their takings even longer, so that it was well past midnight when Harry, Ron, and Hermione finally had the common room to themselves again. At long last, Fred closed the doorway to the boys’ dormitories behind him, rattling his box of Galleons ostentatiously so that Hermione scowled. Harry, who was making very little progress with his Potions essay, decided to give it up for the night. As he put his books away, Ron, who was dozing lightly in an armchair, gave a muffled grunt, awoke, looked blearily into the fire and said, “Sirius!”
Harry whipped around; Sirius’s untidy dark head was sitting in the fire again.
“Hi,” he said, grinning.
“Hi,” chorused Harry, Ron, and Hermione, all three kneeling down upon the hearthrug. Crookshanks purred loudly and approached the fire, trying, despite the heat, to put his face close to Sirius’s.
“How’re things?” said Sirius.
“Not that good,” said Harry, as Hermione pulled Crookshanks back to stop him singeing his whiskers. “The Ministry’s forced through another decree, which means we’re not allowed to have Quidditch teams —”
“— or secret Defense Against the Dark Arts groups?” said Sirius.