Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

on a hillside. Lower and lower they flew, the wind blowing pleasantly in Harry’s face, until they reached a dark and broken window in the upper storey of the house, and entered. Now they were flying along a gloomy passageway, to a room at the very end … through the door they went, into a dark room whose windows were boarded up …
    Harry had left the owl’s back … he was watching, now, as it fluttered across the room, into a chair with its back to him … there were two dark shapes on the floor beside the chair … both of them were stirring …
    One was a huge snake … the other was a man … a short, balding man, a man with watery eyes and a pointed nose … he was wheezing and sobbing on the hearth-rug …
    ‘You are in luck, Wormtail,’ said a cold, high-pitched voice from the depths of the chair in which the owl had landed. ‘You are very fortunate indeed. Your blunder has not ruined everything. He is dead.’
    ‘My Lord!’ gasped the man on the floor. ‘My Lord, I am … I am so pleased … and so sorry …’
    ‘Nagini,’ said the cold voice, ‘you are out of luck. I will not be feeding Wormtail to you, after all … but never mind, never mind … there is still Harry Potter …’
    The snake hissed. Harry could see its tongue fluttering.
    ‘Now, Wormtail,’ said the cold voice, ‘perhaps one more little reminder why I will not tolerate another blunder from you …’
    ‘My Lord … no … I beg you …’
    The tip of a wand emerged from the depths of the chair. It was pointing at Wormtail. ‘Crucio,’ said the cold voice.
    Wormtail screamed, screamed as though every nerve in his body was on fire, the screaming filled Harry’s ears as the scar on his forehead seared with pain; he was yelling, too … Voldemort would hear him, would know he was there …
    ‘Harry! Harry! ’
    Harry opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of Professor Trelawney’s room with his hands over his face. His scar was still burning so badly that his eyes were watering. The pain had been real. The whole class was standing around him, and Ron was kneeling next to him, looking terrified.
    ‘You all right?’ he said.
    ‘Of course he isn’t!’ said Professor Trelawney, looking thoroughly excited. Her great eyes loomed over Harry, gazing at him. ‘What was it, Potter? A premonition? An apparition? What did you see?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Harry lied. He sat up. He could feel himself shaking. He couldn’t stop himself looking around, into the shadows behind him; Voldemort’s voice had sounded so close …
    ‘You were clutching your scar!’ said Professor Trelawney. ‘You were rolling on the floor, clutching your scar! Come now, Potter, I have experience in these matters!’
    Harry looked up at her.
    ‘I need to go to the hospital wing, I think,’ he said. ‘Bad headache.’
    ‘My dear, you were undoubtedly stimulated by the extraordinary clairvoyant vibrations of my room!’ said Professor Trelawney. ‘If you leave now, you may lose the opportunity to see further than you have ever –’
    ‘I don’t want to see anything except a headache cure,’ said Harry.
    He stood up. The class backed away. They all looked unnerved.
    ‘See you later,’ Harry muttered to Ron, and he picked up his bag and headed for the trapdoor, ignoring Professor Trelawney, who was wearing an expression of great frustration, as though she had just been denied a real treat.
    When Harry reached the bottom of her stepladder, however, he did not set off for the hospital wing. He had no intention whatsoever of going there. Sirius had told him what to do if his scar hurt him again, and Harry was going to follow his advice: he was going straight to Dumbledore’s office. He marched down the corridors, thinking about what he had seen in the dream … it had been as vivid as the one which had awoken him in Privet Drive … he ran over the details in his mind, trying to make sure he could remember them … he had heard Voldemort accusing Wormtail of making a blunder … but the owl had brought good news, the blunder had been repaired, somebody was dead … so Wormtail was not going to be fed to the snake … he, Harry, was going to be fed to it instead …
    Harry had walked right past the stone gargoyle guarding the entrance to Dumbledore’s office without noticing. He blinked, looked around, realised what he had done and retraced his steps, stopping in front of it. Then he remembered that he didn’t know the password.
    ‘Sherbet