“Sorry?” said Ron, looking bewildered.
“Sturgis Podmore,” said Hermione, breathlessly. “Arrested for trying to get through a door. Lucius Malfoy got him too. I bet he did it the day you saw him there, Harry. Sturgis had Moody’s Invisibility Cloak, right? So what if he was standing guard by the door, invisible, and Malfoy heard him move, or guessed he was there, or just did the Imperius Curse on the off chance that a guard was there? So when Sturgis next had an opportunity — probably when it was his turn on guard duty again — he tried to get into the department to steal the weapon for Voldemort — Ron, be quiet — but he got caught and sent to Azkaban . . .”
She gazed at Harry.
“And now Rookwood’s told Voldemort how to get the weapon?”
“I didn’t hear all the conversation, but that’s what it sounded like,” said Harry. “Rookwood used to work there. . . . Maybe Voldemort’ll send Rookwood to do it?”
Hermione nodded, apparently still lost in thought. Then, quite abruptly, she said, “But you shouldn’t have seen this at all, Harry.”
“What?” he said, taken aback.
“You’re supposed to be learning how to close your mind to this sort of thing,” said Hermione, suddenly stern.
“I know I am,” said Harry. “But —”
“Well, I think we should just try and forget what you saw,” said Hermione firmly. “And you ought to put in a bit more effort on your Occlumency from now on.”
The week did not improve as it progressed: Harry received two more D’s in Potions, was still on tenterhooks that Hagrid might get the sack, and could not stop himself from dwelling on the dream in which he had seen Voldemort, though he did not bring it up with Ron and Hermione again because he did not want another telling-off from Hermione. He wished very much that he could have talked to Sirius about it, but that was out of the question, so he tried to push the matter to the back of his mind.
Unfortunately, the back of his mind was no longer the secure place it had once been.
“Get up, Potter.”
A couple of weeks after his dream of Rookwood, Harry was to be found, yet again, kneeling on the floor of Snape’s office, trying to clear his head. He had just been forced, yet again, to relive a stream of very early memories he had not even realized he still had, most of them concerning humiliations Dudley and his gang had inflicted upon him in primary school.
“That last memory,” said Snape. “What was it?”
“I don’t know,” said Harry, getting wearily to his feet. He was finding it increasingly difficult to disentangle separate memories from the rush of images and sound that Snape kept calling forth. “You mean the one where my cousin tried to make me stand in the toilet?”
“No,” said Snape softly. “I mean the one concerning a man kneeling in the middle of a darkened room . . .”
“It’s . . . nothing,” said Harry.
Snape’s dark eyes bored into Harry’s. Remembering what Snape had said about eye contact being crucial to Legilimency, Harry blinked and looked away.
“How do that man and that room come to be inside your head, Potter?” said Snape.
“It —” said Harry, looking everywhere but at Snape, “it was — just a dream I had.”
“A dream,” repeated Snape.
There was a pause during which Harry stared fixedly at a large dead frog suspended in a purple liquid in its jar.
“You do know why we are here, don’t you, Potter?” said Snape in a low, dangerous voice. “You do know why I am giving up my evenings to this tedious job?”
“Yes,” said Harry stiffly.
“Remind me why we are here, Potter.”
“So I can learn Occlumency,” said Harry, now glaring at a dead eel.
“Correct, Potter. And dim though you may be” — Harry looked back at Snape, hating him — “I would have thought that after two months’ worth of lessons you might have made some progress. How many other dreams about the Dark Lord have you had?”
“Just that one,” lied Harry.
“Perhaps,” said Snape, his dark, cold eyes narrowing slightly, “perhaps you actually enjoy having these visions and dreams, Potter. Maybe they make you feel special — important?”
“No, they don’t,” said Harry, his jaw set and his fingers clenched tightly around the handle of his wand.
“That is just as well, Potter,” said Snape coldly, “because you are neither special nor important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is saying to his Death Eaters.”
“No — that’s your job, isn’t it?” Harry shot at him.
He had not meant to say it; it had burst out of him in temper. For a long moment they stared at each other, Harry convinced he had gone too far. But there was a curious, almost satisfied expression on Snape’s face when he answered.
“Yes, Potter,” he said, his eyes glinting. “That is my job. Now, if you are ready, we will start again . . .”
He raised his wand. “One — two — three — Legilimens!”
A hundred dementors were swooping toward Harry across the lake in the grounds. . . . He screwed up his face in concentration. . . . They were coming closer. . . . He could see the dark holes beneath their hoods . . . yet he could also see Snape standing in front of him, his eyes fixed upon Harry’s face, muttering under his breath. . . . And somehow, Snape was growing clearer, and the dementors were growing fainter . . .
Harry raised his own wand.
“Protego!”
Snape staggered; his wand flew upward, away from Harry — and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his — a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner. . . . A greasy-haired teenager sat alone in a dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, shooting down flies. . . . A girl was laughing as a scrawny boy tried to mount a bucking broomstick —