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

graver news still. The sight, therefore, of Fudge stepping out of the fire once more, looking dishevelled and fretful and sternly surprised that the Prime Minister did not know exactly why he was there, was about the worst thing that had happened in the course of this extremely gloomy week.
    ‘How should I know what’s going on in the – er – wizarding community?’ snapped the Prime Minister now. ‘I have a country to run and quite enough concerns at the moment without –’
    ‘We have the same concerns,’ Fudge interrupted. ‘The Brockdale bridge didn’t wear out. That wasn’t really a hurricane. Those murders were not the work of Muggles. And Herbert Chorley’s family would be safer without him. We are currently making arrangements to have him transferred to St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. The move should be effected tonight.’
    ‘What do you … I’m afraid I … what ?’ blustered the Prime Minister.
    Fudge took a great, deep breath and said, ‘Prime Minister, I am very sorry to have to tell you that he’s back. He Who Must Not Be Named is back.’
    ‘Back? When you say “back” … he’s alive? I mean –’
    The Prime Minister groped in his memory for the details of that horrible conversation of three years previously, when Fudge had told him about the wizard who was feared above all others, the wizard who had committed a thousand terrible crimes before his mysterious disappearance fifteen years earlier.
    ‘Yes, alive,’ said Fudge. ‘That is – I don’t know – is a man alive if he can’t be killed? I don’t really understand it, and Dumbledore won’t explain properly – but anyway, he’s certainly got a body and is walking and talking and killing, so I suppose, for the purposes of our discussion, yes, he’s alive.’
    The Prime Minister did not know what to say to this, but a persistent habit of wishing to appear well-informed on any subject that came up made him cast around for any details he could remember of their previous conversations.
    ‘Is Serious Black with – er – He Who Must Not Be Named?’
    ‘Black? Black?’ said Fudge distractedly, turning his bowler rapidly in his fingers. ‘Sirius Black, you mean? Merlin’s beard, no. Black’s dead. Turns out we were – er – mistaken about Black. He was innocent after all. And he wasn’t in league with He Who Must Not Be Named either. I mean,’ he added defensively, spinning the bowler hat still faster, ‘all the evidence pointed – we had more than fifty eye-witnesses – but anyway, as I say, he’s dead. Murdered, as a matter of fact. On Ministry of Magic premises. There’s going to be an inquiry, actually …’
    To his great surprise, the Prime Minister felt a fleeting stab of pity for Fudge at this point. It was, however, eclipsed almost immediately by a glow of smugness at the thought that, deficient though he himself might be in the area of materialising out of fireplaces, there had never been a murder in any of the government departments under his charge … not yet, anyway …
    While the Prime Minister surreptitiously touched the wood of his desk, Fudge continued, ‘But Black’s by-the-by now. The point is, we’re at war, Prime Minister, and steps must be taken.’
    ‘At war?’ repeated the Prime Minister nervously. ‘Surely that’s a little bit of an overstatement?’
    ‘He Who Must Not Be Named has now been joined by those of his followers who broke out of Azkaban in January,’ said Fudge, speaking more and more rapidly, and twirling his bowler so fast that it was a lime-green blur. ‘Since they have moved into the open, they have been wreaking havoc. The Brockdale bridge – he did it, Prime Minister, he threatened a mass Muggle killing unless I stood aside for him and –’
    ‘Good grief, so it’s your fault those people were killed and I’m having to answer questions about rusted rigging and corroded expansion joints and I don’t know what else!’ said the Prime Minister furiously.
    ‘ My fault!’ said Fudge, colouring up. ‘Are you saying you would have caved in to blackmail like that?’
    ‘Maybe not,’ said the Prime Minister, standing up and striding about the room, ‘but I would have put all my efforts into catching the blackmailer before he committed any such atrocity!’
    ‘Do you really think I wasn’t already making every effort?’ demanded Fudge heatedly. ‘Every Auror in the Ministry was – and is – trying to find him and round up