“Harry!” said Hermione breathlessly, plunging her hands into the feathery mass and pulling out a screech owl bearing a long, cylindrical package. “I think I know what this means — open this one first!”
Harry ripped off the brown packaging. Out rolled a tightly furled copy of March’s edition of The Quibbler. He unrolled it to see his own face grinning sheepishly at him from the front cover. In large red letters across his picture were the words:
HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST: THE TRUTH ABOUT HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN
“It’s good, isn’t it?” said Luna, who had drifted over to the Gryffindor table and now squeezed herself onto the bench between Fred and Ron. “It came out yesterday, I asked Dad to send you a free copy. I expect all these,” she waved a hand at the assembled owls still scrabbling around on the table in front of Harry, “are letters from readers.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Hermione eagerly, “Harry, d’you mind if we — ?”
“Help yourself,” said Harry, feeling slightly bemused.
Ron and Hermione both started ripping open envelopes.
“This one’s from a bloke who thinks you’re off your rocker,” said Ron, glancing down his letter. “Ah well . . .”
“This woman recommends you try a good course of Shock Spells at St. Mungo’s,” said Hermione, looking disappointed and crumpling up a second.
“This one looks okay, though,” said Harry slowly, scanning a long letter from a witch in Paisley. “Hey, she says she believes me!”
“This one’s in two minds,” said Fred, who had joined in the letter-opening with enthusiasm. “Says you don’t come across as a mad person, but he really doesn’t want to believe You-Know-Who’s back so he doesn’t know what to think now. . . . Blimey, what a waste of parchment . . .”
“Here’s another one you’ve convinced, Harry!” said Hermione excitedly. “‘Having read your side of the story I am forced to the conclusion that the Daily Prophet has treated you very unfairly. . . . Little though I want to think that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned, I am forced to accept that you are telling the truth . . .’ Oh this is wonderful!”
“Another one who thinks you’re barking,” said Ron, throwing a crumpled letter over his shoulder, “but this one says you’ve got her converted, and she now thinks you’re a real hero — she’s put in a photograph too — wow —”
“What is going on here?” said a falsely sweet, girlish voice.
Harry looked up with his hands full of envelopes. Professor Umbridge was standing behind Fred and Luna, her bulging toad’s eyes scanning the mess of owls and letters on the table in front of Harry. Behind her he saw many of the students watching them avidly.
“Why have you got all these letters, Mr. Potter?” she asked slowly.
“Is that a crime now?” said Fred loudly. “Getting mail?”
“Be careful, Mr. Weasley, or I shall have to put you in detention,” said Umbridge. “Well, Mr. Potter?”
Harry hesitated, but he did not see how he could keep what he had done quiet; it was surely only a matter of time before a copy of The Quibbler came to Umbridge’s attention.
“People have written to me because I gave an interview,” said Harry. “About what happened to me last June.”
For some reason he glanced up at the staff table as he said this. He had the strangest feeling that Dumbledore had been watching him a second before, but when he looked, Dumbledore seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Professor Flitwick.
“An interview?” repeated Umbridge, her voice thinner and higher than ever. “What do you mean?”
“I mean a reporter asked me questions and I answered them,” said Harry. “Here —”
And he threw the copy of The Quibbler at her. She caught it and stared down at the cover. Her pale, doughy face turned an ugly, patchy violet.
“When did you do this?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
“Last Hogsmeade weekend,” said Harry.
She looked up at him, incandescent with rage, the magazine shaking in her stubby fingers.
“There will be no more Hogsmeade trips for you, Mr. Potter,” she whispered. “How you dare . . . how you could . . .” She took a deep breath. “I have tried again and again to teach you not to tell lies. The message, apparently, has still not sunk in. Fifty points from Gryffindor and another week’s worth of detentions.”
She stalked away, clutching The Quibbler to her chest, the eyes of many students following her.
By mid-morning enormous signs had been put up all over the school, not just on House notice boards, but in the corridors and classrooms too.
——— BY ORDER OF ———
The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts
Any student found in possession of the magazine The Quibbler will be expelled.
The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven.
For some reason, every time Hermione caught sight of one of these signs she beamed with pleasure.
“What exactly are you so happy about?” Harry asked her.
“Oh Harry, don’t you see?” Hermione breathed. “If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!”
And it seemed that Hermione was quite right. By the end of that day, though Harry had not seen so much as a corner of The Quibbler anywhere in the school, the whole place seemed to be quoting the interview at each other; Harry heard them whispering about it as they queued up outside classes, discussing it over lunch and in the back of lessons, while Hermione even reported that every occupant of the cubicles in the girls’ toilets had been talking about it when she nipped in there before Ancient Runes.