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

looking for within seconds: a small box containing glittering Floo powder.
    He crouched down in front of the empty grate, his hands shaking. He had never done this before, though he thought he knew how it must work. Sticking his head into the fireplace, he took a large pinch of powder and dropped it on to the logs stacked neatly beneath him. They exploded at once into emerald green flames.
    ‘Number twelve, Grimmauld Place!’ Harry said loudly and clearly.
    It was one of the most curious sensations he had ever experienced. He had travelled by Floo powder before, of course, but then it had been his entire body that had spun around and around in the flames through the network of wizarding fireplaces that stretched over the country. This time, his knees remained firm upon the cold floor of Umbridge’s office, and only his head hurtled through the emerald fire …
    And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the spinning stopped. Feeling rather sick and as though he were wearing an exceptionally hot muffler around his head, Harry opened his eyes to find that he was looking up out of the kitchen fireplace at the long, wooden table, where a man sat poring over a piece of parchment.
    ‘Sirius?’
    The man jumped and looked around. It was not Sirius, but Lupin.
    ‘Harry!’ he said, looking thoroughly shocked. ‘What are you – what’s happened, is everything all right?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘I just wondered – I mean, I just fancied a – a chat with Sirius.’
    ‘I’ll call him,’ said Lupin, getting to his feet, still looking perplexed, ‘he went upstairs to look for Kreacher, he seems to be hiding in the attic again …’
    And Harry saw Lupin hurry out of the kitchen. Now he was left with nothing to look at but the chair and table legs. He wondered why Sirius had never mentioned how very uncomfortable it was to speak out of the fire; his knees were already objecting painfully to their prolonged contact with Umbridge’s hard stone floor.
    Lupin returned with Sirius at his heels moments later.
    ‘What is it?’ said Sirius urgently, sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes and dropping to the ground in front of the fire, so that he and Harry were on a level. Lupin knelt down too, looking very concerned. ‘Are you all right? Do you need help?’
    ‘No,’ said Harry, ‘it’s nothing like that … I just wanted to talk … about my dad.’
    They exchanged a look of great surprise, but Harry did not have time to feel awkward or embarrassed; his knees were becoming sorer by the second and he guessed five minutes had already passed from the start of the diversion; George had only guaranteed him twenty. He therefore plunged immediately into the story of what he had seen in the Pensieve.
    When he had finished, neither Sirius nor Lupin spoke for a moment. Then Lupin said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t like you to judge your father on what you saw there, Harry. He was only fifteen –’
    ‘I’m fifteen!’ said Harry heatedly.
    ‘Look, Harry,’ said Sirius placatingly, ‘James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other, it was just one of those things, you can understand that, can’t you? I think James was everything Snape wanted to be – he was popular, he was good at Quidditch – good at pretty much everything. And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts, and James – whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry – always hated the Dark Arts.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, ‘but he just attacked Snape for no good reason, just because – well, just because you said you were bored,’ he finished, with a slightly apologetic note in his voice.
    ‘I’m not proud of it,’ said Sirius quickly.
    Lupin looked sideways at Sirius, then said, ‘Look, Harry, what you’ve got to understand is that your father and Sirius were the best in the school at whatever they did – everyone thought they were the height of cool – if they sometimes got a bit carried away –’
    ‘If we were sometimes arrogant little berks, you mean,’ said Sirius.
    Lupin smiled.
    ‘He kept messing up his hair,’ said Harry in a pained voice.
    Sirius and Lupin laughed.
    ‘I’d forgotten he used to do that,’ said Sirius affectionately.
    ‘Was he playing with the Snitch?’ said Lupin eagerly.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, watching uncomprehendingly as Sirius and Lupin beamed reminiscently. ‘Well … I thought he was a bit of an idiot.’
    ‘Of course he was a bit