Harry Potter 05 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

eyes.
    It was now past midnight and the common room was deserted but for the three of them and Crookshanks. The only sound was that of Hermione’s quill scratching out sentences here and there on their essays and the ruffle of pages as she checked various facts in the reference books strewn across the table. Harry was exhausted. He also felt an odd, sick, empty feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with tiredness and everything to do with the letter now curling blackly in the heart of the fire.
    He knew that half the people inside Hogwarts thought him strange, even mad; he knew that the Daily Prophet had been making snide allusions to him for months, but there was something about seeing it written down like that in Percy’s writing, about knowing that Percy was advising Ron to drop him and even to tell tales about him to Umbridge, that made his situation real to him as nothing else had. He had known Percy for four years, had stayed in his house during the summer holidays, shared a tent with him during the Quidditch World Cup, had even been awarded full marks by him in the second task of the Triwizard Tournament last year, yet now, Percy thought him unbalanced and possibly violent.
    And with a surge of sympathy for his godfather, Harry thought Sirius was probably the only person he knew who could really understand how he felt at the moment, because Sirius was in the same situation. Nearly everyone in the wizarding world thought Sirius a dangerous murderer and a great Voldemort supporter and he had had to live with that knowledge for fourteen years …
    Harry blinked. He had just seen something in the fire that could not have been there. It had flashed into sight and vanished immediately. No … it could not have been … he had imagined it because he had been thinking about Sirius …
    ‘OK, write that down,’ Hermione said to Ron, pushing his essay and a sheet covered in her own writing back to Ron, ‘then add this conclusion I’ve written for you.’
    ‘Hermione, you are honestly the most wonderful person I’ve ever met,’ said Ron weakly, ‘and if I’m ever rude to you again –’
    ‘– I’ll know you’re back to normal,’ said Hermione. ‘Harry, yours is OK except for this bit at the end, I think you must have misheard Professor Sinistra, Europa’s covered in ice, not mice – Harry?’
    Harry had slid off his chair on to his knees and was now crouching on the singed and threadbare hearthrug, gazing into the flames.
    ‘Er – Harry?’ said Ron uncertainly. ‘Why are you down there?’
    ‘Because I’ve just seen Sirius’s head in the fire,’ said Harry.
    He spoke quite calmly; after all, he had seen Sirius’s head in this very fire the previous year and talked to it, too; nevertheless, he could not be sure that he had really seen it this time … it had vanished so quickly …
    ‘Sirius’s head?’ Hermione repeated. ‘You mean like when he wanted to talk to you during the Triwizard Tournament? But he wouldn’t do that now, it would be too – Sirius !’
    She gasped, gazing at the fire; Ron dropped his quill. There in the middle of the dancing flames sat Sirius’s head, long dark hair falling around his grinning face.
    ‘I was starting to think you’d go to bed before everyone else had disappeared,’ he said. ‘I’ve been checking every hour.’
    ‘You’ve been popping into the fire every hour?’ Harry said, half-laughing.
    ‘Just for a few seconds to check if the coast was clear.’
    ‘But what if you’d been seen?’ said Hermione anxiously.
    ‘Well, I think a girl – first-year, by the look of her – might’ve got a glimpse of me earlier, but don’t worry,’ Sirius said hastily, as Hermione clapped a hand to her mouth, ‘I was gone the moment she looked back at me and I’ll bet she just thought I was an oddly-shaped log or something.’
    ‘But, Sirius, this is taking an awful risk –’ Hermione began.
    ‘You sound like Molly,’ said Sirius. ‘This was the only way I could come up with of answering Harry’s letter without resorting to a code – and codes are breakable.’
    At the mention of Harry’s letter, Hermione and Ron both turned to stare at him.
    ‘You didn’t say you’d written to Sirius!’ said Hermione accusingly.
    ‘I forgot,’ said Harry, which was perfectly true; his meeting with Cho in the Owlery had driven everything before it out of his mind. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Hermione, there was no way anyone would have got