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

weapon probably made the Imperius Curse lift. Once he’d got his voice back, he’d explain what he’d been doing, wouldn’t he? They would have known he’d been sent to steal the weapon. Of course, it would have been easy for Lucius Malfoy to put the curse on him. Never out of the Ministry, is he?’
    ‘He was even hanging around that day I had my hearing,’ said Harry. ‘In the – hang on …’ he said slowly. ‘He was in the Department of Mysteries corridor that day! Your dad said he was probably trying to sneak down and find out what happened in my hearing, but what if –’
    ‘Sturgis!’ gasped Hermione, looking thunderstruck.
    ‘Sorry?’ said Ron, looking bewildered.
    ‘Sturgis Podmore –’ said Hermione breathlessly, ‘arrested for trying to get through a door! Lucius Malfoy must have 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 someone was there – or just did the Imperius Curse on the off-chance there’d be a guard 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; he was still on tenterhooks that Hagrid might get the sack; and he couldn’t stop himself dwelling on the dream in which he had been Voldemort – though he didn’t bring it up with Ron and Hermione again; he didn’t 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 realised 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 with 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 jar of purple liquid.
    ‘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