“ENOUGH!”
Harry felt as though he had been pushed hard in the chest; he took several staggering steps backward, hit some of the shelves covering Snape’s walls and heard something crack. Snape was shaking slightly, very white in the face.
The back of Harry’s robes were damp. One of the jars behind him had broken when he fell against it; the pickled slimy thing within was swirling in its draining potion.
“Reparo!” hissed Snape, and the jar sealed itself once more. “Well, Potter . . . that was certainly an improvement . . .” Panting slightly, Snape straightened the Pensieve in which he had again stored some of his thoughts before starting the lesson, almost as though checking that they were still there. “I don’t remember telling you to use a Shield Charm . . . but there is no doubt that it was effective . . .”
Harry did not speak; he felt that to say anything might be dangerous. He was sure he had just broken into Snape’s memories, that he had just seen scenes from Snape’s childhood, and it was unnerving to think that the crying little boy who had watched his parents shouting was actually standing in front of him with such loathing in his eyes. . . .
“Let’s try again, shall we?” said Snape.
Harry felt a thrill of dread: He was about to pay for what had just happened, he was sure of it. They moved back into position with the desk between them, Harry feeling he was going to find it much harder to empty his mind this time. . . .
“On the count of three, then,” said Snape, raising his wand once more. “One — two —”
Harry did not have time to gather himself together and attempt to clear his mind, for Snape had already cried “Legilimens!”
He was hurtling along the corridor toward the Department of Mysteries, past the blank stone walls, past the torches — the plain black door was growing ever larger; he was moving so fast he was going to collide with it, he was feet from it and he could see that chink of faint blue light again —
The door had flown open! He was through it at last, inside a black-walled, black-floored circular room lit with blue-flamed candles, and there were more doors all around him — he needed to go on — but which door ought he to take — ?
“POTTER!”
Harry opened his eyes. He was flat on his back again with no memory of having gotten there; he was also panting as though he really had run the length of the Department of Mysteries corridor, really had sprinted through the black door and found the circular room. . . .
“Explain yourself!” said Snape, who was standing over him, looking furious.
“I . . . dunno what happened,” said Harry truthfully, standing up. There was a lump on the back of his head from where he had hit the ground and he felt feverish. “I’ve never seen that before. I mean, I told you, I’ve dreamed about the door . . . but it’s never opened before . . .”
“You are not working hard enough!”
For some reason, Snape seemed even angrier than he had done two minutes before, when Harry had seen into his own memories.
“You are lazy and sloppy, Potter, it is small wonder that the Dark Lord —”
“Can you tell me something, sir?” said Harry, firing up again. “Why do you call Voldemort the Dark Lord, I’ve only ever heard Death Eaters call him that —”
Snape opened his mouth in a snarl — and a woman screamed from somewhere outside the room.
Snape’s head jerked upward; he was gazing at the ceiling.
“What the — ?” he muttered.
Harry could hear a muffled commotion coming from what he thought might be the entrance hall. Snape looked around at him, frowning.
“Did you see anything unusual on your way down here, Potter?”
Harry shook his head. Somewhere above them, the woman screamed again. Snape strode to his office door, his wand still held at the ready, and swept out of sight. Harry hesitated for a moment, then followed.
The screams were indeed coming from the entrance hall; they grew louder as Harry ran toward the stone steps leading up from the dungeons. When he reached the top he found the entrance hall packed. Students had come flooding out of the Great Hall, where dinner was still in progress, to see what was going on. Others had crammed themselves onto the marble staircase. Harry pushed forward through a knot of tall Slytherins and saw that the onlookers had formed a great ring, some of them looking shocked, others even frightened. Professor McGonagall was directly opposite Harry on the other side of the hall; she looked as though what she was watching made her feel faintly sick.
Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the entrance hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad. Her hair was sticking up on end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other; her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart at the seams. Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upside down; it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her. Professor Trelawney was staring, apparently terrified, at something Harry could not see but that seemed to be standing at the foot of the stairs.
“No!” she shrieked. “NO! This cannot be happening. . . . It cannot . . . I refuse to accept it!”
“You didn’t realize this was coming?” said a high girlish voice, sounding callously amused, and Harry, moving slightly to his right, saw that Trelawney’s terrifying vision was nothing other than Professor Umbridge. “Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow’s weather, you must surely have realized that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable you would be sacked?”