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

interest you!’
    Harry’s heart turned over. His mother and father were beaming up at him, sitting on either side of a small, watery-eyed man whom Harry recognised at once as Wormtail, the one who had betrayed his parents’ whereabouts to Voldemort and so helped to bring about their deaths.
    ‘Eh?’ said Moody.
    Harry looked up into Moody’s heavily scarred and pitted face. Evidently Moody was under the impression he had just given Harry a bit of a treat.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, once again attempting to grin. ‘Er … listen, I’ve just remembered, I haven’t packed my …’
    He was spared the trouble of inventing an object he had not packed. Sirius had just said, ‘What’s that you’ve got there, Mad-Eye?’ and Moody had turned towards him. Harry crossed the kitchen, slipped through the door and up the stairs before anyone could call him back.
    He did not know why it had been such a shock; he had seen pictures of his parents before, after all, and he had met Wormtail … but to have them sprung on him like that, when he was least expecting it … no one would like that, he thought angrily …
    And then, to see them surrounded by all those other happy faces … Benjy Fenwick, who had been found in bits, and Gideon Prewett, who had died like a hero, and the Longbottoms, who had been tortured into madness … all waving happily out of the photograph forever more, not knowing that they were doomed … well, Moody might find that interesting … he, Harry, found it disturbing …
    Harry tiptoed up the stairs in the hall past the stuffed elf-heads, glad to be on his own again, but as he approached the first landing he heard noises. Someone was sobbing in the drawing room.
    ‘Hello?’ Harry said.
    There was no answer but the sobbing continued. He climbed the remaining stairs two at a time, walked across the landing and opened the drawing-room door.
    Someone was cowering against the dark wall, her wand in her hand, her whole body shaking with sobs. Sprawled on the dusty old carpet in a patch of moonlight, clearly dead, was Ron.
    All the air seemed to vanish from Harry’s lungs; he felt as though he were falling through the floor; his brain turned icy cold – Ron dead, no, it couldn’t be –
    But wait a moment, it couldn’t be – Ron was downstairs –
    ‘Mrs Weasley?’ Harry croaked.
    ‘R – r – riddikulus!’ Mrs Weasley sobbed, pointing her shaking wand at Ron’s body.
    Crack.
    Ron’s body turned into Bill’s, spread-eagled on his back, his eyes wide open and empty. Mrs Weasley sobbed harder than ever.
    ‘R – riddikulus!’ she sobbed again.
    Crack.
    Mr Weasley’s body replaced Bill’s, his glasses askew, a trickle of blood running down his face.
    ‘No!’ Mrs Weasley moaned. ‘No … riddikulus ! Riddikulus! RIDDIKULUS! ’
    Crack. Dead twins. Crack. Dead Percy. Crack. Dead Harry …
    ‘Mrs Weasley, just get out of here!’ shouted Harry, staring down at his own dead body on the floor. ‘Let someone else –’
    ‘What’s going on?’
    Lupin had come running into the room, closely followed by Sirius, with Moody stumping along behind them. Lupin looked from Mrs Weasley to the dead Harry on the floor and seemed to understand in an instant. Pulling out his own wand, he said, very firmly and clearly:
    ‘Riddikulus!’
    Harry’s body vanished. A silvery orb hung in the air over the spot where it had lain. Lupin waved his wand once more and the orb vanished in a puff of smoke.
    ‘Oh – oh – oh!’ gulped Mrs Weasley, and she broke into a storm of crying, her face in her hands.
    ‘Molly,’ said Lupin bleakly, walking over to her. ‘Molly, don’t …’
    Next second, she was sobbing her heart out on Lupin’s shoulder.
    ‘Molly, it was just a Boggart,’ he said soothingly, patting her on the head. ‘Just a stupid Boggart …’
    ‘I see them d – d – dead all the time!’ Mrs Weasley moaned into his shoulder. ‘All the t – t – time! I d – d – dream about it …’
    Sirius was staring at the patch of carpet where the Boggart, pretending to be Harry’s body, had lain. Moody was looking at Harry, who avoided his gaze. He had a funny feeling Moody’s magical eye had followed him all the way out of the kitchen.
    ‘D – d – don’t tell Arthur,’ Mrs Weasley was gulping now, mopping her eyes frantically with her cuffs. ‘I d – d – don’t want him to know … being silly …’
    Lupin handed her a handkerchief and she blew her nose.
    ‘Harry, I’m so