“What!” said Harry and Ron together.
“Hermione, it was your idea in the first place!” said Ron indignantly.
“I know,” said Hermione, twisting her fingers together. “But after talking to Snuffles . . .”
“But he’s all for it!” said Harry.
“Yes,” said Hermione, staring at the window again. “Yes, that’s what made me think maybe it wasn’t a good idea after all . . .”
Peeves floated over them on his stomach, peashooter at the ready; automatically all three of them lifted their bags to cover their heads until he had passed.
“Let’s get this straight,” said Harry angrily, as they put their bags back on the floor, “Sirius agrees with us, so you don’t think we should do it anymore?”
Hermione looked tense and rather miserable. Now staring at her own hands she said, “Do you honestly trust his judgment?”
“Yes, I do!” said Harry at once. “He’s always given us great advice!”
An ink pellet whizzed past them, striking Katie Bell squarely in the ear. Hermione watched Katie leap to her feet and start throwing things at Peeves; it was a few moments before Hermione spoke again and it sounded as though she was choosing her words very carefully.
“You don’t think he has become . . . sort of . . . reckless . . . since he’s been cooped up in Grimmauld Place? You don’t think he’s . . . kind of . . . living through us?”
“What d’you mean, ‘living through us’?” Harry retorted.
“I mean . . . well, I think he’d love to be forming secret defense societies right under the nose of someone from the Ministry. . . . I think he’s really frustrated at how little he can do where he is . . . so I think he’s keen to kind of . . . egg us on.”
Ron looked utterly perplexed.
“Sirius is right,” he said, “you do sound just like my mother.”
Hermione bit her lip and did not answer. The bell rang just as Peeves swooped down upon Katie and emptied an entire ink bottle over her head.
The weather did not improve as the day wore on, so that at seven o’clock that evening, when Harry and Ron went down to the Quidditch pitch for practice, they were soaked through within minutes, their feet slipping and sliding on the sodden grass. The sky was a deep, thundery gray and it was a relief to gain the warmth and light of the changing rooms, even if they knew the respite was only temporary. They found Fred and George debating whether to use one of their own Skiving Snackboxes to get out of flying.
“— but I bet she’d know what we’d done,” Fred said out of the corner of his mouth. “If only I hadn’t offered to sell her some Puking Pastilles yesterday —”
“We could try the Fever Fudge,” George muttered, “no one’s seen that yet —”
“Does it work?” inquired Ron hopefully, as the hammering of rain on the roof intensified and wind howled around the building.
“Well, yeah,” said Fred, “your temperature’ll go right up —”
“— but you get these massive pus-filled boils too,” said George, “and we haven’t worked out how to get rid of them yet.”
“I can’t see any boils,” said Ron, staring at the twins.
“No, well, you wouldn’t,” said Fred darkly, “they’re not in a place we generally display to the public —”
“— but they make sitting on a broom a right pain in the —”
“All right, everyone, listen up,” said Angelina loudly, emerging from the Captain’s office. “I know it’s not ideal weather, but there’s a good chance we’ll be playing Slytherin in conditions like this so it’s a good idea to work out how we’re going to cope with them. Harry, didn’t you do something to your glasses to stop the rain fogging them up when we played Hufflepuff in that storm?”
“Hermione did it,” said Harry. He pulled out his wand, tapped his glasses and said, “Impervius!”
“I think we all ought to try that,” said Angelina. “If we could just keep the rain off our faces it would really help visibility — all together, come on — Impervius! Okay. Let’s go.”
They all stowed their wands back in the inside pockets of their robes, shouldered their brooms, and followed Angelina out of the changing rooms.
They squelched through the deepening mud to the middle of the pitch; visibility was still very poor even with the Impervius Charm; light was fading fast and curtains of rain were sweeping the grounds.
“All right, on my whistle,” shouted Angelina.
Harry kicked off from the ground, spraying mud in all directions, and shot upward, the wind pulling him slightly off course. He had no idea how he was going to see the Snitch in this weather; he was having enough difficulty seeing the one Bludger with which they were practicing; a minute into the practice it almost unseated him and he had to use the Sloth Grip Roll to avoid it. Unfortunately Angelina did not see this; in fact, she did not appear to be able to see anything; none of them had a clue what the others were doing. The wind was picking up; even at a distance Harry could hear the swishing, pounding sounds of the rain pummeling the surface of the lake.
Angelina kept them at it for nearly an hour before conceding defeat. She led her sodden and disgruntled team back into the changing rooms, insisting that the practice had not been a waste of time, though without any real conviction in her voice. Fred and George were looking particularly annoyed; both were bandy-legged and winced with every movement. Harry could hear them complaining in low voices as he toweled his hair dry.
“I think a few of mine have ruptured,” said Fred in a hollow voice.
“Mine haven’t,” said George, wincing. “They’re throbbing like mad . . . feel bigger if anything . . .”
“OUCH!” said Harry.
He pressed the towel to his face, his eyes screwed tight with pain. The scar on his forehead had seared again, more painfully than in months.