Harry Potter 01 - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it.
    ‘Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.’
    He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled.
    ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked.
    ‘My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.’
    ‘You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,’ said Professor McGonagall.
    ‘All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.’
    Professor McGonagall sniffed angrily.
    ‘Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.’ She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. ‘I heard it. Flocks of owls … shooting stars … Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent – I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.’
    ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.’
    ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably. ‘But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping rumours.’
    She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on: ‘A fine thing it would be if, on the very day You-Know-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?’
    ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?’
    ‘A what? ’
    ‘A sherbet lemon. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather fond of.’
    ‘No, thank you,’ said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. ‘As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone –’
    ‘My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this “You-Know-Who” nonsense – for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort. ’ Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. ‘It all gets so confusing if we keep saying “You-Know-Who”.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort’s name.’
    ‘I know you haven’t,’ said Professor McGonagall, sounding half-exasperated, half-admiring. ‘But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know – oh, all right, Voldemort – was frightened of.’
    ‘You flatter me,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Voldemort had powers I will never have.’
    ‘Only because you’re too – well – noble to use them.’
    ‘It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.’
    Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, ‘The owls are nothing to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?’
    It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and did not answer.
    ‘What they’re saying, ’ she pressed