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

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 his followers, but we happen to be talking about one of the most powerful wizards of all time, a wizard who has eluded capture for almost three decades!’
    ‘So I suppose you’re going to tell me he caused the hurricane in the West Country, too?’ said the Prime Minister, his temper rising with every pace he took. It was infuriating to discover the reason for all these terrible disasters and not to be able to tell the public; almost worse than it being the government’s fault after all.
    ‘That was no hurricane,’ said Fudge miserably.
    ‘Excuse me!’ barked the Prime Minister, now positively stamping up and down. ‘Trees uprooted, roofs ripped off, lampposts bent, horrible injuries –’
    ‘It was the Death Eaters,’ said Fudge. ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’s followers. And … and we suspect giant involvement.’
    The Prime Minister stopped in his tracks as though he had hit an invisible wall.
    ‘ What involvement?’
    Fudge grimaced. ‘He used giants last time, when he wanted to go for the grand effect. The Office of Misinformation has been working round the clock, we’ve had teams of Obliviators out trying to modify the memories of all the Muggles who saw what really happened, we’ve got most of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures running around Somerset, but we can’t find the giant – it’s been a disaster.’
    ‘You don’t say!’ said the Prime Minister furiously.
    ‘I won’t deny that morale is pretty low at the Ministry,’ said Fudge. ‘What with all that, and then losing Amelia Bones.’
    ‘Losing who?’
    ‘Amelia Bones. Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. We think He Who Must Not Be Named may have murdered her in person, because she was a very gifted witch and – and all the evidence was that she put up a real fight.’
    Fudge cleared his throat and, with an effort, it seemed, stopped spinning his bowler hat.
    ‘But that murder was in the newspapers,’ said the Prime Minister, momentarily diverted from his anger. ‘ Our newspapers. Amelia Bones … it just said she was a middle-aged woman who lived alone. It was a – a nasty killing, wasn’t it? It’s had