“What’s up?” said several voices.
Harry emerged from behind his towel; the changing room was blurred because he was not wearing his glasses; but he could still tell that everyone’s face was turned toward him.
“Nothing,” he muttered, “I — poked myself in the eye, that’s all . . .”
But he gave Ron a significant look and the two of them hung back as the rest of the team filed back outside, muffled in their cloaks, their hats pulled low over their ears.
“What happened?” said Ron, the moment that Alicia had disappeared through the door. “Was it your scar?”
Harry nodded.
“But . . .” Looking scared, Ron strode across to the window and stared out into the rain, “He — he can’t be near us now, can he?”
“No,” Harry muttered, sinking onto a bench and rubbing his forehead. “He’s probably miles away. It hurt because . . . he’s . . . angry.”
Harry had not meant to say that at all, and heard the words as though a stranger had spoken them — yet he knew at once that they were true. He did not know how he knew it, but he did; Voldemort, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, was in a towering temper.
“Did you see him?” said Ron, looking horrified. “Did you . . . get a vision, or something?”
Harry sat quite still, staring at his feet, allowing his mind and his memory to relax in the aftermath of the pain. . . .
A confused tangle of shapes, a howling rush of voices . . .
“He wants something done, and it’s not happening fast enough,” he said.
Again, he felt surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth, and yet quite certain that they were true.
“But . . . how do you know?” said Ron.
Harry shook his head and covered his eyes with his hands, pressing down upon them with his palms. Little stars erupted in them. He felt Ron sit down on the bench beside him and knew Ron was staring at him.
“Is this what it was about last time?” said Ron in a hushed voice. “When your scar hurt in Umbridge’s office? You-Know-Who was angry?”
Harry shook his head.
“What is it, then?”
Harry was thinking himself back. He had been looking into Umbridge’s face. . . . His scar had hurt . . . and he had had that odd feeling in his stomach . . . a strange, leaping feeling . . . a happy feeling. . . . But, of course, he had not recognized it for what it was, as he had been feeling so miserable himself. . . .
“Last time, it was because he was pleased,” he said. “Really pleased. He thought . . . something good was going to happen. And the night before we came back to Hogwarts . . .” He thought back to the moment when his scar had hurt so badly in his and Ron’s bedroom in Grimmauld Place. “He was furious . . .”
He looked around at Ron, who was gaping at him.
“You could take over from Trelawney, mate,” he said in an awed voice.
“I’m not making prophecies,” said Harry.
“No, you know what you’re doing?” Ron said, sounding both scared and impressed. “Harry, you’re reading You-Know-Who’s mind. . . .”
“No,” said Harry, shaking his head. “It’s more like . . . his mood, I suppose. I’m just getting flashes of what mood he’s in. . . . Dumbledore said something like this was happening last year. . . . He said that when Voldemort was near me, or when he was feeling hatred, I could tell. Well, now I’m feeling it when he’s pleased too . . .”
There was a pause. The wind and rain lashed at the building.
“You’ve got to tell someone,” said Ron.
“I told Sirius last time.”
“Well, tell him about this time!”
“Can’t, can I?” said Harry grimly. “Umbridge is watching the owls and the fires, remember?”
“Well then, Dumbledore —”
“I’ve just told you, he already knows,” said Harry shortly, getting to his feet, taking his cloak off his peg, and swinging it around himself. “There’s no point telling him again.”
Ron did up the fastening of his own cloak, watching Harry thoughtfully.
“Dumbledore’d want to know,” he said.
Harry shrugged.
“C’mon . . . we’ve still got Silencing Charms to practice . . .”
They hurried back through the dark grounds, sliding and stumbling up the muddy lawns, not talking. Harry was thinking hard. What was it that Voldemort wanted done that was not happening quickly enough?
“He’s got other plans . . . plans he can put into operation very quietly indeed . . . stuff he can only get by stealth . . . like a weapon. Something he didn’t have last time.”
He had not thought about those words in weeks; he had been too absorbed in what was going on at Hogwarts, too busy dwelling on the ongoing battles with Umbridge, the injustice of all the Ministry interference. . . . But now they came back to him and made him wonder. . . . Voldemort’s anger would make sense if he was no nearer laying hands on the weapon, whatever it was. . . . Had the Order thwarted him, stopped him from seizing it? Where was it kept? Who had it now?
“Mimbulus mimbletonia,” said Ron’s voice and Harry came back to his senses just in time to clamber through the portrait hole into the common room.
It appeared that Hermione had gone to bed early, leaving Crookshanks curled in a nearby chair and an assortment of knobbly, knitted elf hats lying on a table by the fire. Harry was rather grateful that she was not around because he did not much want to discuss his scar hurting and have her urge him to go to Dumbledore too. Ron kept throwing him anxious glances, but Harry pulled out his Potions book and set to work to finish his essay, though he was only pretending to concentrate and, by the time that Ron said he was going to bed too, had written hardly anything.
Midnight came and went while Harry was reading and rereading a passage about the uses of scurvy-grass, lovage, and sneezewort and not taking in a word of it. . . .