Harry Potter 06 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

that warning, then? Excellent. Well, I hope we don’t see each other again, Prime Minister! Goodnight.’
    But they had seen each other again. Less than a year later a harassed-looking Fudge had appeared out of thin air in the Cabinet Room to inform the Prime Minister that there had been a spot of bother at the Kwidditch (or that was what it had sounded like) World Cup and that several Muggles had been ‘involved’, but that the Prime Minister was not to worry, the fact that You-Know-Who’s Mark had been seen again meant nothing; Fudge was sure it was an isolated incident and the Muggle Liaison Office was dealing with all memory modifications as they spoke.
    ‘Oh, and I almost forgot,’ Fudge had added. ‘We’re importing three foreign dragons and a sphinx for the Triwizard Tournament, quite routine, but the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures tells me that it’s down in the rulebook that we have to notify you if we’re bringing highly dangerous creatures into the country.’
    ‘I – what – dragons ?’ spluttered the Prime Minister.
    ‘Yes, three,’ said Fudge. ‘And a sphinx. Well, good day to you.’
    The Prime Minister had hoped beyond hope that dragons and sphinxes would be the worst of it, but no. Less than two years later, Fudge had erupted out of the fire yet again, this time with the news that there had been a mass breakout from Azkaban.
    ‘A mass breakout?’ the Prime Minister had repeated hoarsely.
    ‘No need to worry, no need to worry!’ Fudge had shouted, already with one foot in the flames. ‘We’ll have them rounded up in no time – just thought you ought to know!’
    And before the Prime Minister had been able to shout, ‘Now, wait just one moment!’ Fudge had vanished in a shower of green sparks.
    Whatever the press and the opposition might say, the Prime Minister was not a foolish man. It had not escaped his notice that, despite Fudge’s assurances at their first meeting, they were now seeing rather a lot of each other, nor that Fudge was becoming more flustered with each visit. Little though he liked to think about the Minister for Magic (or, as he always called Fudge in his head, the Other Minister), the Prime Minister could not help but fear that the next time Fudge appeared it would be with 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