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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J. K. Rowling BLOOMSBURY To Peter Rowling, in memory of Mr Ridley and to Susan Sladden, who helped Harry out of his cupboard ? — CHAPTER ONE — The Riddle House The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it ‘the Riddle House’, even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict and unoccupied. The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was ‘creepy’. Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was any more. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer’s morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, and a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead. The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village, and roused as many people as she could. ‘Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!’ The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr and Mrs Riddle had been rich, snobbish and rude, and their grown-up son, Tom, had been even more so. All the villagers cared about was the identity of their murderer – plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night. The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village had turned out to discuss the murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the Riddles’ cook arrived dramatically in their midst, and announced to the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had just been arrested. ‘Frank!’ cried several people. ‘Never!’ Frank Bryce was the Riddles’ gardener. He lived alone in a run-down cottage in the Riddle House grounds. Frank had come back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Riddles ever since. There was a rush to buy the cook drinks, and hear more details. ‘Always thought he was odd,’ she told the eagerly listening villagers, after her fourth sherry. ‘Unfriendly, like. I’m sure if I’ve offered him a cuppa once, I’ve offered it a hundred times. Never wanted to mix, he didn’t.’ ‘Ah, now,’ said a woman at the bar, ‘he had a hard war, Frank, he likes the quiet life. That’s no reason to –’ ‘Who else had a key to the back door, then?’ barked the cook. ‘There’s been a spare key hanging in the gardener’s cottage far back as I can remember! Nobody forced the door last night! No broken windows! All Frank had to do was creep up to the big house while we was all sleeping .’ The villagers exchanged dark looks. ‘I always thought he had a nasty look about him, right enough,’ grunted a man at the bar. ‘War turned him funny, if you ask me,’ said the landlord. ‘Told you I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of Frank, didn’t I, Dot?’ said an excited woman in the corner. ‘Horrible temper,’ said Dot, nodding fervently, ‘I remember, when he was a kid .’ By the following morning, hardly anyone in Little Hangleton doubted that Frank Bryce had killed the Riddles. But over in the neighbouring town of Great Hangleton, in the dark and dingy police station, Frank was stubbornly repeating, again and again, that he was innocent, and that the only person he had seen near the house on the day of the Riddles’ deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark-haired and pale. Nobody else in the village had seen any such boy, and the police were quite sure that Frank had invented him. Then, just when things were looking very serious for Frank, the report on the Riddles’ bodies came back and changed everything. The police had never read an odder report. A team of doctors had examined the bodies, and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, stran¬gled, suffocated or (as far as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact, the report continued, in a tone of unmistakable bewilder¬ment, the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health – apart from the fact that they were all dead. The doctors did note (as though determined to find something wrong with the bodies) that each of the Riddles had a look of terror upon his or her face – but as the frustrated police said, whoever heard of three people being frightened to death? As there was no proof that the Riddles had been murdered at all, the police were forced to let Frank go. The Riddles were buried in the Little Hangleton churchyard, and their graves remained objects of curiosity for a while. To everyone’s surprise, and amidst a cloud of suspicion, Frank Bryce returned to his cottage in the grounds of the Riddle House. ‘ ’S’far as I’m concerned, he killed them, and I don’t care what the police say,’ said Dot in the Hanged Man. ‘And if he had any decency, he’d leave here, knowing as how we knows he did it.’ But Frank did not leave. He stayed to tend the garden for the next family who lived in the Riddle House, and then the next – for neither family stayed long. Perhaps it was partly because of Frank that each new owner said there was a nasty feeling about the place, which, in the absence of inhabitants, started to fall into disrepair. * The wealthy man who owned the Riddle House these days neither lived there nor put it to any use; they said in the village that he kept it for ‘tax reasons’, though nobody was very clear what these might be. The wealthy owner continued to pay Frank to do the gardening, however. Frank was nearing his seventy-seventh birthday now, very deaf, his bad leg stiffer than ever, but could be seen pottering around the flowerbeds in fine weather, even though the weeds were starting to creep up on him. Weeds were not the only things Frank had to contend with, either. Boys from the village made a habit of throwing stones through the windows of the Riddle House. They rode their bicycles over the lawns Frank worked so hard to keep smooth. Once or twice, they broke into the old house for a dare. They knew that old Frank was devoted to the house and grounds, and it amused them to see him limping across the garden, brandishing his stick and yelling croakily at them. Frank, on his part, believed the boys tormented him because they, like their parents and grandparents, thought him a murderer. So when Frank awoke one night in August, and saw something very odd up at the old house, he merely assumed that the boys had gone one step further in their attempts to punish him. It was Frank’s bad leg that woke him; it was paining him worse than ever in his old age. He got up and limped down¬stairs into the kitchen, with the idea of re-filling his hot-water bottle to ease the stiffness in his knee. Standing at the sink, fill-ing the kettle, he looked up at the Riddle House and saw lights glimmering in its upper windows. Frank knew at once what was going on. The boys had broken into the house again, and judging by the flickering quality of the light, they had started a fire. Frank had no telephone, and in any case, he had deeply mistrusted the police ever since they had taken him in for questioning about the Riddles’ deaths. He put down the kettle at once, hurried back upstairs as fast as his bad leg would allow, and was soon back in his kitchen, fully dressed and removing a rusty old key from its hook by the door. He picked up his walking stick, which was propped against the wall, and set off into the night. The front door of the Riddle House bore no sign of being forced, and nor did any of the windows. Frank limped around to the back of the house until he reached a door almost com¬pletely hidden by ivy, took out the old key, put it into the lock and opened the door noiselessly. He had let himself into the cavernous kitchen. Frank had not entered it for many years; nevertheless, although it was very dark, he remembered where the door into the hall was, and he groped his way towards it, his nostrils full of the smell of decay, ears pricked for any sound of footsteps or voices from overhead. He reached the hall, which was a little lighter owing to the large mullioned windows either side of the front door, and started to climb the stairs, blessing the dust which lay thick upon the stone, because it muffled the sound of his feet and stick. On the landing, Frank turned right, and saw at once where the intruders were: at the very end of the passage a door stood ajar, and a flickering light shone through the gap, casting a long sliver of gold across the black floor. Frank edged closer and closer, grasping his walking stick firmly. Several feet from the entrance, he was able to see a narrow slice of the room beyond. The fire, he now saw, had been lit in the grate. This surprised him. He stopped moving and listened intently, for a man’s voice spoke within the room; it sounded timid and fearful. ‘There is a little more in the bottle, my Lord, if you are still hungry.’ ‘Later,’ said a second voice. This, too, belonged to a man – but it was strangely high-pitched, and cold as a sudden blast of icy wind. Something about that voice made the sparse hairs on the back of Frank’s neck stand up. ‘Move me closer to the fire, Wormtail.’ Frank turned his right ear towards the door, the better to hear. There came the chink of a bottle being put down upon some hard surface, and then the dull scraping noise of a heavy chair being dragged across the floor. Frank caught a glimpse of a small man, his back to the door, pushing the chair into place. He was wearing a long black cloak, and there was a bald patch at the back of his head. Then he disappeared from sight again. ‘Where is Nagini?’ said the cold voice. ‘I – I don’t know, my Lord,’ said the first voice nervously. ‘She set out to explore the house, I think .’ ‘You will milk her before we retire, Wormtail,’ said the second voice. ‘I will need feeding in the night. The journey has tired me greatly.’ Brow furrowed, Frank inclined his good ear still closer to the door, listening very hard. There was a pause, and then the man called Wormtail spoke again. ‘My Lord, may I ask how long we are going to stay here?’ ‘A week,’ said the cold voice. ‘Perhaps longer. The place is moderately comfortable, and the plan cannot proceed yet. It would be foolish to act before the Quidditch World Cup is over.’ Frank inserted a gnarled finger into his ear and rotated it. Owing, no doubt, to a build-up of earwax, he had heard the word ‘Quidditch’, which was not a word at all. ‘The – the Quidditch World Cup, my Lord?’ said Wormtail. (Frank dug his finger still more vigorously into his ear.) ‘Forgive me, but – I do not understand – why should we wait until the World Cup is over?’ ‘Because, fool, at this very moment wizards are pouring into the country from all over the world, and every meddler from the Ministry of Magic will be on duty, on the watch for signs of unusual activity, checking and double-checking identities. They will be obsessed with security, lest the Muggles notice anything. So we wait.’ Frank stopped trying to clear his ear out. He had distinctly heard the words ‘Ministry of Magic’, ‘wizards’ and ‘Muggles’. Plainly, each of these expressions meant something secret, and Frank could think of only two sorts of people who would speak in code – spies and criminals. Frank tightened his hold on his walking stick once more, and listened more closely still. ‘Your Lordship is still determined, then?’ Wormtail said quietly. ‘Certainly I am determined, Wormtail.’ There was a note of menace in the cold voice now. A slight pause followed – and then Wormtail spoke, the words tumbling from him in a rush, as though he was forcing himself to say this before he lost his nerve. ‘It could be done without Harry Potter, my Lord.’ Another pause, more protracted, and then – ‘Without Harry Potter?’ breathed the second voice softly. ‘I see .’ ‘My Lord, I do not say this out of concern for the boy!’ said Wormtail, his voice rising squeakily. ‘The boy is nothing to me, nothing at all! It is merely that if we were to use another witch or wizard – any wizard – the thing could be done so much more quickly! If you allowed me to leave you for a short while – you know that I can disguise myself most effectively – I could be back here in as little as two days with a suitable person –’ ‘I could use another wizard,’ said the second voice softly, ‘that is true .’ ‘My Lord, it makes sense,’ said Wormtail, sounding thoroughly relieved now, ‘laying hands on Harry Potter would be so difficult, he is so well protected –’ ‘And so you volunteer to go and fetch me a substitute? I wonder . perhaps the task of nursing me has become weari¬some for you, Wormtail? Could this suggestion of abandoning the plan be nothing more than an attempt to desert me?’ ‘My Lord! I – I have no wish to leave you, none at all –’ ‘Do not lie to me!’ hissed the second voice. ‘I can always tell, Wormtail! You are regretting that you ever returned to me. I revolt you. I see you flinch when you look at me, feel you shudder when you touch me .’ ‘No! My devotion to your Lordship –’ ‘Your devotion is nothing more than cowardice. You would not be here if you had anywhere else to go. How am I to survive without you, when I need feeding every few hours? Who is to milk Nagini?’ ‘But you seem so much stronger, my Lord –’ ‘Liar,’ breathed the second voice. ‘I am no stronger, and a few days alone would be enough to rob me of the little health I have regained under your clumsy care. Silence!’ Wormtail, who had been spluttering incoherently, fell silent at once. For a few seconds, Frank could hear nothing but the fire crackling. Then the second man spoke once more, in a whisper that was almost a hiss. ‘I have my reasons for using the boy, as I have already explained to you, and I will use no other. I have waited thirteen years. A few more months will make no difference. As for the protection surrounding the boy, I believe my plan will be effective. All that is needed is a little courage from you, Wormtail – courage you will find, unless you wish to feel the full extent of Lord Voldemort’s wrath –’ ‘My Lord, I must speak!’ said Wormtail, panic in his voice now. ‘All through our journey I have gone over the plan in my head – my Lord, Bertha Jorkins’s disappearance will not go unnoticed for long, and if we proceed, if I curse –’ ‘If?’ whispered the second voice. ‘If? If you follow the plan, Wormtail, the Ministry need never know that anyone else has disappeared. You will do it quietly, and without fuss; I only wish that I could do it myself, but in my present condition . come, Wormtail, one more obstacle removed and our path to Harry Potter is clear. I am not asking you to do it alone. By that time, my faithful servant will have rejoined us –’ ‘I am a faithful servant,’ said Wormtail, the merest trace of sullenness in his voice. ‘Wormtail, I need somebody with brains, somebody whose loyalty has never wavered, and you, unfortunately, fulfil neither requirement.’ ‘I found you,’ said Wormtail, and there was definitely a sulky edge to his voice now. ‘I was the one who found you. I brought you Bertha Jorkins.’ ‘That is true,’ said the second man, sounding amused. ‘A stroke of brilliance I would not have thought possible from you, Wormtail – though, if truth be told, you were not aware how useful she would be when you caught her, were you?’ ‘I – I thought she might be useful, my Lord –’ ‘Liar,’ said the second voice again, the cruel amusement more pronounced than ever. ‘However, I do not deny that her information was invaluable. Without it, I could never have formed our plan, and for that, you will have your reward, Wormtail. I will allow you to perform an essential task for me, one that many of my followers would give their right hands to perform .’ ‘R-really, my Lord? What –?’ Wormtail sounded terrified again. ‘Ah, Wormtail, you don’t want me to spoil the surprise? Your part will come at the very end . but I promise you, you will have the honour of being just as useful as Bertha Jorkins.’ ‘You . you .’ Wormtail’s voice sounded suddenly hoarse, as though his mouth had gone very dry. ‘You . are going . to kill me, too?’ ‘Wormtail, Wormtail,’ said the cold voice silkily, ‘why would I kill you? I killed Bertha because I had to. She was fit for nothing after my questioning, quite useless. In any case, awk¬ward questions would have been asked if she had gone back to the Ministry with the news that she had met you on her holi¬days. Wizards who are supposed to be dead would do well not to run into Ministry of Magic witches at wayside inns .’ Wormtail muttered something so quietly that Frank could not hear it, but it made the second man laugh – an entirely mirthless laugh, cold as his speech. ‘We could have modified her memory? But Memory Charms can be broken by a powerful wizard, as I proved when I ques¬tioned her. It would be an insult to her memory not to use the information I extracted from her, Wormtail.’ Out in the corridor, Frank suddenly became aware that the hand gripping his walking stick was slippery with sweat. The man with the cold voice had killed a woman. He was talking about it without any kind of remorse – with amusement. He was dangerous – a madman. And he was planning more murders – this boy, Harry Potter, whoever he was – was in danger – Frank knew what he must do. Now, if ever, was the time to go to the police. He would creep out of the house and head straight for the telephone box in the village . but the cold voice was speaking again, and Frank remained where he was, frozen to the spot, listening with all his might. ‘One more curse . my faithful servant at Hogwarts . Harry Potter is as good as mine, Wormtail. It is decided. There will be no more argument. But quiet . I think I hear Nagini .’ And the second man’s voice changed. He started making noises such as Frank had never heard before; he was hissing and spitting without drawing breath. Frank thought he must be having some sort of fit or seizure. And then Frank heard movement behind him in the dark passageway. He turned to look behind him, and found himself paralysed with fright. Something was slithering towards him along the dark corri¬dor floor, and as it drew nearer to the sliver of firelight, he realised with a thrill of terror that it was a gigantic snake, at least twelve feet long. Horrified, transfixed, Frank stared at it as its undulating body cut a wide, curving track through the thick dust on the floor, coming closer and closer – what was he to do? The only means of escape was into the room where two men sat plotting murder, yet if he stayed where he was the snake would surely kill him – But before he had made his decision, the snake was level with him, and then, incredibly, miraculously, it was passing; it was following the spitting, hissing noises made by the cold voice beyond the door, and in seconds, the tip of its diamond-patterned tail had vanished through the gap. There was sweat on Frank’s forehead now, and the hand on the walking stick was trembling. Inside the room, the cold voice was continuing to hiss, and Frank was visited by a strange idea, an impossible idea . This man could talk to snakes. Frank didn’t understand what was going on. He wanted more than anything to be back in his bed with his hot-water bottle. The problem was that his legs didn’t seem to want to move. As he stood there shaking, and trying to master himself, the cold voice switched abruptly to English again. ‘Nagini has interesting news, Wormtail,’ it said. ‘In-indeed, my Lord?’ said Wormtail. ‘Indeed, yes,’ said the voice. ‘According to Nagini, there is an old Muggle standing right outside this room, listening to every word we say.’ Frank didn’t have a chance to hide himself. There were footsteps, and then the door of the room was flung wide open. A short, balding man with greying hair, a pointed nose and small, watery eyes stood before Frank, a mixture of fear and alarm on his face. ‘Invite him inside, Wormtail. Where are your manners?’ The cold voice was coming from the ancient armchair before the fire, but Frank couldn’t see the speaker. The snake, on the other hand, was curled up on the rotting hearth-rug, like some horrible travesty of a pet dog. Wormtail beckoned Frank into the room. Though still deeply shaken, Frank took a firmer grip upon his walking stick, and limped over the threshold. The fire was the only source of light in the room; it was cast¬ing long, spidery shadows upon the walls. Frank stared at the back of the armchair; the man inside it seemed to be even smaller than his servant, for Frank couldn’t even see the back of his head. ‘You heard everything, Muggle?’ said the cold voice. ‘What’s that you’re calling me?’ said Frank defiantly, for now that he was inside the room, now that the time had come for some sort of action, he felt braver; it had always been so in the war. ‘I am calling you a Muggle,’ said the voice coolly. ‘It means that you are not a wizard.’ ‘I don’t know what you mean by wizard,’ said Frank, his voice growing steadier. ‘All I know is I’ve heard enough to interest the police tonight, I have. You’ve done murder and you’re planning more! And I’ll tell you this, too,’ he added, on a sudden inspiration, ‘my wife knows I’m up here, and if I don’t come back –’ ‘You have no wife,’ said the cold voice, very quietly. ‘Nobody knows you are here. You told nobody that you were coming. Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Muggle, for he knows . he always knows .’ ‘Is that right?’ said Frank roughly. ‘Lord, is it? Well, I don’t think much of your manners, my Lord. Turn round and face me like a man, why don’t you?’ ‘But I am not a man, Muggle,’ said the cold voice, barely audible now over the crackling of the flames. ‘I am much, much more than a man. However . why not? I will face you . Wormtail, come turn my chair around.’ The servant gave a whimper. ‘You heard me, Wormtail.’ Slowly, with his face screwed up, as though he would rather have done anything than approach his master and the hearth¬rug where the snake lay, the small man walked forwards and began to turn the chair. The snake lifted its ugly triangular head and hissed slightly as the legs of the chair snagged on its rug. And then the chair was facing Frank, and he saw what was sitting in it. His walking stick fell to the floor with a clatter. He opened his mouth and let out a scream. He was screaming so loudly that he never heard the words the thing in the chair spoke, as it raised a wand. There was a flash of green light, a rushing sound, and Frank Bryce crumpled. He was dead before he hit the floor. Two hundred miles away, the boy called Harry Potter woke with a start. ? — CHAPTER TWO — The Scar Harry lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had awoken from a vivid dream with his hands pressed over his face. The old scar on his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin. He sat up, one hand still on his scar, the other reaching out in the darkness for his glasses, which were on the bedside table. He put them on and his bedroom came into clearer focus, lit by a faint, misty orange light that was filtering through the curtains from the street lamp outside the window. Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful. He turned on the lamp beside him, scrambled out of bed, crossed the room, opened his wardrobe and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny boy of fourteen looked back at him, his bright green eyes puzzled under his untidy black hair. He examined the lightning-bolt scar of his reflection more closely. It looked normal, but it was still stinging. Harry tried to recall what he had been dreaming about before he had awoken. It had seemed so real . there had been two people he knew, and one he didn’t . he concentrated hard, frowning, trying to remember . The dim picture of a darkened room came to him . there had been a snake on a hearth-rug . a small man called Peter, nicknamed Wormtail . and a cold, high voice . the voice of Lord Voldemort. Harry felt as though an ice cube had slipped down into his stomach at the very thought . He closed his eyes tightly and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like, but it was impossible . all Harry knew was that at the moment when Voldemort’s chair had swung around, and he, Harry, had seen what was sitting in it, he had felt a spasm of horror which had awoken him . or had that been the pain in his scar? And who had the old man been? For there had definitely been an old man; Harry had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused; Harry put his face into his hands, blocking out his bedroom, trying to hold on to the picture of that dimly lit room, but it was like trying to keep water in his cupped hands; the details were now trickling away as fast as he tried to hold on to them . Voldemort and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though Harry could not remember the name . and they had been plotting to kill someone else . him . Harry took his face out of his hands, opened his eyes and stared around his bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. As it happened, there were an extra¬ordinary number of unusual things in this room. A large wooden trunk stood open at the foot of his bed, revealing a cauldron, broomstick, black robes and assorted spellbooks. Rolls of parchment littered that part of his desk that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which his snowy owl, Hedwig, usually perched. On the floor beside his bed a book lay open; he had been reading it before he fell asleep the previ¬ous night. The pictures in this book were all moving. Men in bright orange robes were zooming in and out of sight on broomsticks, throwing a red ball to each other. Harry walked over to this book, picked it up and watched one of the wizards score a spectacular goal by putting the ball through a fifty-foot-high hoop. Then he snapped the book shut. Even Quidditch – in Harry’s opinion, the best sport in the world – couldn’t distract him at the moment. He placed Flying with the Cannons on his bedside table, crossed to the window and drew back the curtains to survey the street below. Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban street would be expected to look in the early hours of Saturday morning. All the curtains were closed. As far as Harry could see through the darkness, there wasn’t a living creature in sight, not even a cat. And yet . and yet . Harry went restlessly back to his bed and sat down on it, running a finger over his scar again. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him; Harry was no stranger to pain and injury. He had lost all the bones from his right arm once, and had them painfully regrown in a night. The same arm had been pierced by a venomous foot-long fang not long afterwards. Only last year Harry had fallen fifty feet from an airborne broomstick. He was used to bizarre accidents and injuries; they were unavoidable if you attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and had a knack for attract¬ing a lot of trouble. No, the thing that was bothering Harry was that the last time his scar had hurt him, it had been because Voldemort had been close by . but Voldemort couldn’t be here, now . the idea of Voldemort lurking in Privet Drive was absurd, impos-sible . Harry listened closely to the silence around him. Was he half expecting to hear the creak of a stair, or the swish of a cloak? And then he jumped slightly as he heard his cousin Dudley give a tremendous grunting snore from the next room. Harry shook himself mentally; he was being stupid; there was no one in the house with him except Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley, and they were plainly still asleep, their dreams untroubled and painless. Asleep was the way Harry liked the Dursleys best; it wasn’t as though they were ever any help to him awake. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley were Harry’s only living relatives. They were Muggles (non-magic people) who hated and despised magic in any form, which meant that Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot. They had explained away Harry’s long absences at Hogwarts over the last three years by telling everyone that he went to St Brutus’s Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys. They knew perfect¬ly well that, as an underage wizard, Harry wasn’t allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts, but were still apt to blame him for anything that went wrong about the house. Harry had never been able to confide in them, or tell them anything about his life in the wizarding world. The very idea of going to them when they awoke, and telling them about his scar hurt-ing him, and about his worries about Voldemort, was laugh¬able. And yet it was because of Voldemort that Harry had come to live with the Dursleys in the first place. If it hadn’t been for Voldemort, Harry would not have had the lightning scar on his forehead. If it hadn’t been for Voldemort, Harry would still have had parents . Harry had been a year old the night that Voldemort – the most powerful Dark wizard for a century, a wizard who had been gaining power steadily for eleven years – arrived at his house and killed his father and mother. Voldemort had then turned his wand on Harry; he had performed the curse that had disposed of many full-grown witches and wizards in his steady rise to power – and, incredibly, it had not worked. Instead of killing the small boy, the curse had rebounded upon Voldemort. Harry had survived with nothing but a lightning-shaped cut on his forehead, and Voldemort had been reduced to something barely alive. His powers gone, his life almost extinguished, Voldemort had fled; the terror in which the secret community of witches and wizards had lived for so long had lifted, Voldemort’s followers had disbanded, and Harry Potter had become famous. It had been enough of a shock for Harry to discover, on his eleventh birthday, that he was a wizard; it had been even more disconcerting to find out that everyone in the hidden wizard¬ing world knew his name. Harry had arrived at Hogwarts to find that heads turned and whispers followed him wherever he went. But he was used to it now: at the end of this summer, he would be starting his fourth year at Hogwarts; and he was already counting the days until he would be back at the castle again. But there was still a fortnight to go before he went back to school. He looked hopelessly around his room again, and his eye paused on the birthday cards his two best friends had sent him at the end of July. What would they say if he wrote to them and told them about his scar hurting? At once, Hermione Granger’s voice filled his head, shrill and panicky. ‘Your scar hurt? Harry, that’s really serious . Write to Professor Dumbledore! And I’ll go and check Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions . Maybe there’s something in there about curse scars .’ Yes, that would be Hermione’s advice: go straight to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult a book. Harry stared out of the window at the inky, blue-black sky. He doubted very much whether a book could help him now. As far as he knew, he was the only living person to have survived a curse like Voldemort’s; it was highly unlikely, therefore, that he would find his symptoms listed in Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions. As for informing the Headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full-length wizard’s robes and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion into his long crooked nose. Wherever Dumbledore was, though, Harry was sure that Hedwig would be able to find him; Harry’s owl had never yet failed to deliver a letter to any¬one, even without an address. But what would he write? Dear Professor Dumbledore, Sorry to bother you, but my scar hurt this morning. Yours sincerely, Harry Potter. Even inside his head the words sounded stupid. And so he tried to imagine his other best friend Ron Weasley’s reaction, and in a moment, Ron’s long-nosed, freck¬led face seemed to swim before Harry, wearing a bemused expression. ‘Your scar hurt? But . but You-Know-Who can’t be near you now, can he? I mean . you’d know, wouldn’t you? He’d be trying to do you in again, wouldn’t he? I dunno, Harry, maybe curse scars always twinge a bit . I’ll ask Dad .’ Mr Weasley was a fully qualified wizard who worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office at the Ministry of Magic, but he didn’t have any particular expertise in the matter of curses, as far as Harry knew. In any case, Harry didn’t like the idea of the whole Weasley family knowing that he, Harry, was getting jumpy about a few moments’ pain. Mrs Weasley would fuss worse than Hermione, and Fred and George, Ron’s sixteen-year-old twin brothers, might think Harry was losing his nerve. The Weasleys were Harry’s favourite family in the world; he was hoping that they might invite him to stay any time now (Ron had mentioned something about the Quidditch World Cup), and he somehow didn’t want his visit punctuated with anxious enquiries about his scar. Harry kneaded his forehead with his knuckles. What he really wanted (and it felt almost shameful to admit it to himself) was someone like – someone like a parent: an adult wizard whose advice he could ask without feeling stupid, someone who cared about him, who had had experience of Dark Magic . And then the solution came to him. It was so simple, and so obvious, that he couldn’t believe it had taken so long – Sirius. Harry leapt up from the bed, hurried across the room and sat down at his desk; he pulled a piece of parchment towards him, loaded his eagle-feather quill with ink, wrote Dear Sirius, then paused, wondering how best to phrase his problem, and still marvelling at the fact that he hadn’t thought of Sirius straight away. But then, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising – after all, he had only found out that Sirius was his godfather two months ago. There was a simple reason for Sirius’ complete absence from Harry’s life until then – Sirius had been in Azkaban, the terrify¬ing wizard gaol guarded by creatures called Dementors, sight¬less, soul-sucking fiends who had come to search for Sirius at Hogwarts when he had escaped. Yet Sirius had been innocent –the murders for which he had been convicted had been committed by Wormtail, Voldemort’s supporter, whom nearly everybody now believed dead. Harry, Ron and Hermione knew otherwise, however; they had come face to face with Wormtail the previous year, though only Professor Dumbledore had believed their story. For one glorious hour, Harry had believed that he was leaving the Dursleys at last, because Sirius had offered him a home once his name had been cleared. But the chance had been snatched away from him – Wormtail had escaped before they could take him to the Ministry of Magic, and Sirius had had to flee for his life. Harry had helped him escape on the back of a Hippogriff called Buckbeak, and since then, Sirius had been on the run. The home Harry might have had if Wormtail had not escaped had been haunting him all summer. It had been doubly hard to return to the Dursleys knowing that he had so nearly escaped them for ever. Nevertheless, Sirius had been of some help to Harry, even if he couldn’t be with him. It was due to Sirius that Harry now had all his school things in his bedroom with him. The Dursleys had never allowed this before; their general wish of keeping Harry as miserable as possible, coupled with their fear of his powers, had led them to lock his school trunk in the cupboard under the stairs every summer prior to this. But their attitude had changed since they had found out that Harry had a dangerous murderer for a godfather – Harry had con¬veniently forgotten to tell them that Sirius was innocent. Harry had received two letters from Sirius since he had been back at Privet Drive. Both had been delivered, not by owls (as was usual with wizards) but by large, brightly coloured, tropical birds. Hedwig had not approved of these flashy intruders; she had been most reluctant to allow them to drink from her water tray before flying off again. Harry, on the other hand, had liked them; they put him in mind of palm trees and white sand, and he hoped that wherever Sirius was (Sirius never said, in case the letters were intercepted) he was enjoy¬ing himself. Somehow, Harry found it hard to imagine Dementors surviving for long in bright sunlight; perhaps that was why Sirius had gone south. Sirius’ letters, which were now hidden beneath the highly useful loose floorboard under Harry’s bed, sounded cheerful, and in both of them he had reminded Harry to call on him if ever Harry needed to. Well, he needed to now, all right . Harry’s lamp seemed to grow dimmer as the cold grey light that precedes sunrise slowly crept into the room. Finally, when the sun had risen, when his bedroom walls had turned gold and when sounds of movement could be heard from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia’s room, Harry cleared his desk of crumpled pieces of parchment, and re-read his finished letter. Dear Sirius, Thanks for your last letter, that bird was enormous, it could hardly get through my window. Things are the same as usual here. Dudley’s diet isn’t going too well. My aunt found him smuggling doughnuts into his room yesterday. They told him they’d have to cut his pocket money if he keeps doing it, so he got really angry and chucked his PlayStation out of the window. That’s a sort of computer thing you can play games on. Bit stupid really, now he hasn’t even got Mega-Mutilation Part Three to take his mind off things. I’m OK, mainly because the Dursleys are terrified you might turn up and turn them all into bats if I ask you to. A weird thing happened this morning, though. My scar hurt again. Last time that happened it was because Voldemort was at Hogwarts. But I don’t reckon he can be anywhere near me now, can he? Do you know if curse scars sometimes hurt years afterwards? I’ll send this with Hedwig when she gets back, she’s off hunting at the moment. Say hello to Buckbeak for me. Harry Yes, thought Harry, that looked all right. There was no point putting in the dream, he didn’t want it to look as though he was too worried. He folded the parchment up and laid it aside on his desk, ready for when Hedwig returned. Then he got to his feet, stretched and opened his wardrobe once more. Without glancing at his reflection, he started to get dressed before going down to breakfast. ? — CHAPTER THREE — The Invitation By the time Harry arrived in the kitchen, the three Dursleys were already seated around the table. None of them looked up as he entered or sat down. Uncle Vernon’s large red face was hidden behind the morning’s Daily Mail and Aunt Petunia was cutting a grapefruit into quarters, her lips pursed over her horse-like teeth. Dudley looked furious and sulky, and somehow seemed to be taking up even more space than usual. This was saying something, as he always took up an entire side of the square table by himself. When Aunt Petunia put a quarter of unsweet-ened grapefruit onto Dudley’s plate with a tremulous ‘There you are, Diddy darling’, Dudley glowered at her. His life had taken a most unpleasant turn since he had come home for the summer with his end-of-year report. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had managed to find excuses for his bad marks as usual; Aunt Petunia always insist¬ed that Dudley was a very gifted boy whose teachers didn’t understand him, while Uncle Vernon maintained that ‘he didn’t want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway’. They also skated over the accusations of bullying in the report – ‘He’s a boisterous little boy, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly!’ said Aunt Petunia tearfully. However, at the bottom of the report there were a few well chosen comments from the school nurse which not even Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia could explain away. No matter how much Aunt Petunia wailed that Dudley was big-boned, and that his poundage was really puppy-fat, and that he was a growing boy who needed plenty of food, the fact remained that the school outfitters didn’t stock knickerbockers big enough for him any more. The school nurse had seen what Aunt Petunia’s eyes – so sharp when it came to spotting fingerprints on her gleaming walls, and in observing the comings and goings of the neighbours – simply refused to see: that, far from needing extra nourishment, Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale. So – after many tantrums, after arguments that shook Harry’s bedroom floor, and many tears from Aunt Petunia – the new regime had begun. The diet sheet that had been sent by the Smeltings school nurse had been taped to the fridge, which had been emptied of all Dudley’s favourite things – fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers – and filled instead with fruit and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Vernon called ‘rabbit food’. To make Dudley feel better about it all, Aunt Petunia had insisted that the whole family follow the diet too. She now passed a grapefruit quarter to Harry. He noticed that it was a lot smaller than Dudley’s. Aunt Petunia seemed to feel that the best way to keep up Dudley’s morale was to make sure that he did, at least, get more to eat than Harry. But Aunt Petunia didn’t know what was hidden under the loose floorboard upstairs. She had no idea that Harry was not following the diet at all. The moment he had got wind of the fact that he was expected to survive the summer on carrot sticks, Harry had sent Hedwig to his friends with pleas for help, and they had risen to the occasion magnificently. Hedwig had returned from Hermione’s house with a large box stuffed full of sugar-free snacks (Hermione’s parents were dentists). Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, had obliged with a sack full of his own home-made rock cakes (Harry hadn’t touched these; he had had too much experience of Hagrid’s cooking). Mrs Weasley, however, had sent the family owl, Errol, with an enormous fruitcake and assorted pasties. Poor Errol, who was elderly and feeble, had needed a full five days to recover from the journey. And then on Harry’s birthday (which the Dursleys had completely ignored) he had received four superb birthday cakes, one each from Ron, Hermione, Hagrid and Sirius. Harry still had two of them left, and so, looking forward to a real breakfast when he got back upstairs, he started eating his grapefruit without complaint. Uncle Vernon laid aside his paper with a deep sniff of dis¬approval and looked down at his own grapefruit quarter. ‘Is this it?’ he said grumpily to Aunt Petunia. Aunt Petunia gave him a severe look, and then nodded pointedly at Dudley, who had already finished his own grape¬fruit quarter, and was eyeing Harry’s with a very sour look in his piggy little eyes. Uncle Vernon gave a great sigh which ruffled his large, bushy moustache, and picked up his spoon. The doorbell rang. Uncle Vernon heaved himself out of his chair and set off down the hall. Quick as a flash, while his mother was occupied with the kettle, Dudley stole the rest of Uncle Vernon’s grapefruit. Harry heard talking at the door, and someone laughing, and Uncle Vernon answering curtly. Then the front door closed, and the sound of ripping paper came from the hall. Aunt Petunia set the teapot down on the table and looked curiously around to see where Uncle Vernon had got to. She didn’t have to wait long to find out; after about a minute, he was back. He looked livid. ‘You,’ he barked at Harry. ‘In the living room. Now.’ Bewildered, wondering what on earth he was supposed to have done this time, Harry got up and followed Uncle Vernon out of the kitchen and into the next room. Uncle Vernon closed the door sharply behind both of them. ‘So,’ he said, marching over to the fireplace and turning to face Harry as though he was about to pronounce him under arrest. ‘So.’ Harry would have dearly loved to have said ‘So what?’, but he didn’t feel that Uncle Vernon’s temper should be tested this early in the morning, especially when it was already under severe strain from lack of food. He therefore settled for looking politely puzzled. ‘This just arrived,’ said Uncle Vernon. He brandished a piece of purple writing paper at Harry. ‘A letter. About you.’ Harry’s confusion increased. Who would be writing to Uncle Vernon about him? Who did he know who sent letters by the postman? Uncle Vernon glared at Harry, then looked down at the letter, and began to read aloud: Dear Mr and Mrs Dursley, We have never been introduced, but I am sure you have heard a great deal from Harry about my son Ron. As Harry might have told you, the final of the Quidditch World Cup takes place next Monday night, and my husband, Arthur, has just managed to get prime tickets through his connections at the Department of Magical Games and Sports. I do hope you will allow us to take Harry to the match, as this really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; Britain hasn’t hosted the Cup for thirty years and tickets are extremely hard to come by. We would of course be glad to have Harry to stay for the remainder of the summer holidays, and to see him safely onto the train back to school. It would be best for Harry to send us your answer as quickly as possible in the normal way, because the Muggle postman has never delivered to our house, and I am not sure he even knows where it is. Hoping to see Harry soon, Yours sincerely, Molly Weasley P.S. I do hope we’ve put enough stamps on. Uncle Vernon finished reading, put his hand back into his breast pocket, and drew out something else. ‘Look at this,’ he growled. He held up the envelope in which Mrs Weasley’s letter had come, and Harry had to fight down a laugh. Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a square inch on the front, into which Mrs Weasley had squeezed the Dursleys’ address in minute writing. ‘She did put enough stamps on, then,’ said Harry, trying to sound as though Mrs Weasley’s was a mistake anyone could make. His uncle’s eyes flashed. ‘The postman noticed,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Very interested to know where this letter came from, he was. That’s why he rang the doorbell. Seemed to think it was funny.’ Harry didn’t say anything. Other people might not under¬stand why Uncle Vernon was making a fuss about too many stamps, but Harry had lived with the Dursleys too long not to know how touchy they were about anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Their worst fear was that anyone would find out that they were connected (however distantly) with people like Mrs Weasley. Uncle Vernon was still glaring at Harry, who tried to keep his expression neutral. If he didn’t do or say anything stupid, he might just be in for the treat of a lifetime. He waited for Uncle Vernon to say something, but he merely continued to glare. Harry decided to break the silence. ‘So – can I go, then?’ he asked. A slight spasm crossed Uncle Vernon’s large, purple face. The moustache bristled. Harry thought he knew what was going on behind the moustache: a furious battle as two of Uncle Vernon’s most fundamental instincts came into conflict. Allowing Harry to go would make Harry happy, something Uncle Vernon had struggled against for thirteen years. On the other hand, allowing Harry to disappear to the Weasleys’ for the rest of the summer would get rid of him two weeks earlier than anyone could have hoped, and Uncle Vernon hated having Harry in the house. To give himself thinking time, it seemed, he looked down at Mrs Weasley’s letter again. ‘Who is this woman?’ he said, staring at the signature with distaste. ‘You’ve seen her,’ said Harry. ‘She’s my friend Ron’s mother, she was meeting him off the Hog— off the school train at the end of last term.’ He had almost said ‘Hogwarts Express’, and that was a sure way to get his uncle’s temper up. Nobody ever mentioned the name of Harry’s school aloud in the Dursley household. Uncle Vernon screwed up his enormous face as though trying to remember something very unpleasant. ‘Dumpy sort of woman?’ he growled finally. ‘Load of children with red hair?’ Harry frowned. He thought it was a bit rich of Uncle Vernon to call anyone ‘dumpy’, when his own son, Dudley, had finally achieved what he’d been threatening to do since the age of three, and become wider than he was tall. Uncle Vernon was perusing the letter again. ‘Quidditch,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Quidditch – what is this rubbish?’ Harry felt a second stab of annoyance. ‘It’s a sport,’ he said shortly. ‘Played on broom—’ ‘All right, all right!’ said Uncle Vernon loudly. Harry saw, with some satisfaction, that his uncle looked vaguely panicky. Apparently his nerves wouldn’t stand the sound of the word ‘broomsticks’ in his living room. He took refuge in perusing the letter again. Harry saw his lips form the words ‘send us your answer in the normal way’. He scowled. ‘What does she mean, the normal way?’ he spat. ‘Normal for us,’ said Harry, and before his uncle could stop him, he added, ‘you know, owl post. That’s what’s normal for wizards.’ Uncle Vernon looked as outraged as if Harry had just uttered a disgusting swear word. Shaking with anger, he shot a nervy look through the window, as though expecting to see some of the neighbours with their ears pressed against the glass. ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to mention that unnaturalness under my roof?’ he hissed, his face now a rich plum colour. ‘You stand there, in the clothes Petunia and I have put on your ungrateful back –’ ‘Only after Dudley finished with them,’ said Harry coldly, and indeed, he was dressed in a sweatshirt so large for him that he had had to roll back the sleeves five times so as to be able to use his hands, and which fell past the knees of his extremely baggy jeans. ‘I will not be spoken to like that!’ said Uncle Vernon, trem¬bling with rage. But Harry wasn’t going to stand for this. Gone were the days when he had been forced to take every single one of the Dursleys’ stupid rules. He wasn’t following Dudley’s diet, and he wasn’t going to let Uncle Vernon stop him going to the Quidditch World Cup, not if he could help it. Harry took a deep, steadying breath and then said, ‘OK, I can’t see the World Cup. Can I go now, then? Only I’ve got a letter to Sirius I want to finish. You know – my godfather.’ He had done it. He had said the magic words. Now he watched the purple recede blotchily from Uncle Vernon’s face, making it look like badly mixed blackcurrant ice-cream. ‘You’re – you’re writing to him, are you?’ said Uncle Vernon, in a would-be calm voice – but Harry had seen the pupils of his tiny eyes contract with sudden fear. ‘Well – yeah,’ said Harry, casually. ‘It’s been a while since he heard from me, and, you know, if he doesn’t, he might start thinking something’s wrong.’ He stopped there to enjoy the effect of these words. He could almost see the cogs working under Uncle Vernon’s thick, dark, neatly parted hair. If he tried to stop Harry writing to Sirius, Sirius would think Harry was being mistreated. If he told Harry he couldn’t go to the Quidditch World Cup, Harry would write and tell Sirius, who would know he was being mistreated. There was only one thing for Uncle Vernon to do. Harry could see the conclusion forming in his mind as though the great moustached face was transparent. Harry tried not to smile, to keep his own face as blank as possible. And then – ‘Well, all right then. You can go to this ruddy . this stupid . this World Cup thing. You write and tell these – these Weasleys they’re to pick you up, mind. I haven’t got time to go dropping you off all over the country. And you can spend the rest of the summer there. And you can tell your – your god¬father . tell him . tell him you’re going.’ ‘OK then,’ said Harry brightly. He turned and walked towards the living-room door, fight¬ing the urge to jump into the air and whoop. He was going . he was going to the Weasleys’, he was going to watch the Quidditch World Cup! Outside in the hall he nearly ran into Dudley, who had been lurking behind the door, clearly hoping to overhear Harry being told off. He looked shocked to see the broad grin on Harry’s face. ‘That was an excellent breakfast, wasn’t it?’ said Harry. ‘I feel really full, don’t you?’ Laughing at the astonished look on Dudley’s face, Harry took the stairs three at a time, and hurled himself back into his bedroom. The first thing he saw was that Hedwig was back. She was sitting in her cage, staring at Harry with her enormous amber eyes, and clicking her beak in the way that meant she was annoyed about something. Exactly what was annoying her became apparent almost at once. ‘OUCH!’ said Harry. What appeared to be a small, grey, feathery tennis ball had just collided with the side of Harry’s head. Harry massaged his head furiously, looking up to see what had hit him, and saw a minute owl, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand, whizzing excitedly around the room like a loose firework. Harry then realised that the owl had dropped a letter at his feet. Harry bent down, recognised Ron’s handwriting, then tore open the envelope. Inside was a hastily scribbled note. Harry – DAD GOT THE TICKETS – Ireland versus Bulgaria, Monday night. Mum’s writing to the Muggles to ask you to stay. They might already have the letter, I don’t know how fast Muggle post is. Thought I’d send this with Pig anyway. Harry stared at the word ‘Pig’, then looked up at the tiny owl now zooming around the lampshade on the ceiling. He had never seen anything that looked less like a pig. Maybe he couldn’t read Ron’s writing. He went back to the letter: We’re coming for you whether the Muggles like it or not, you can’t miss the World Cup, only Mum and Dad reckon it’s better if we pretend to ask their permission first. If they say yes, send Pig back with your answer pronto, and we’ll come and get you at five o’clock on Sunday. If they say no, send Pig back pronto and we’ll come and get you at five o’clock on Sunday anyway. Hermione’s arriving this afternoon. Percy’s started work – the Department of International Magical Co-operation. Don’t mention anything about Abroad while you’re here unless you want the pants bored off you. See you soon – Ron ‘Calm down!’ Harry said, as the small owl flew low over his head, twittering madly with what Harry could only assume was pride at having delivered the letter to the right person. ‘Come here, I need you to take my answer back!’ The owl fluttered down on top of Hedwig’s cage. Hedwig looked coldly up at it, as though daring it to try and come any closer. Harry seized his eagle-feather quill once more, grabbed a fresh piece of parchment, and wrote: Ron, it’s all OK, the Muggles say I can come. See you five o’clock tomorrow. Can’t wait. Harry He folded this note up very small and, with immense difficulty, tied it to the tiny owl’s leg as it hopped on the spot with excite¬ment. The moment the note was secure, the owl was off again; it zoomed out of the window and out of sight. Harry turned to Hedwig. ‘Feeling up to a long journey?’ he asked her. Hedwig hooted in a dignified sort of way. ‘Can you take this to Sirius for me?’ he said, picking up his letter. ‘Hang on . I just want to finish it.’ He unfolded the parchment again and hastily added a postscript. If you want to contact me, I’ll be at my friend Ron Weasley’s for the rest of the summer. His dad’s got us tickets for the Quidditch World Cup! The letter finished, he tied it to Hedwig’s leg; she kept unusu¬ally still, as though determined to show him how a real post owl should behave. ‘I’ll be at Ron’s when you get back, all right?’ Harry told her. She nipped his finger affectionately, then, with a soft swooshing noise, spread her enormous wings and soared out of the open window. Harry watched her out of sight, then crawled under his bed, wrenched up the loose floorboard, and pulled out a large chunk of birthday cake. He sat there on the floor eating it, savouring the happiness that was flooding through him. He had cake, and Dudley had nothing but grapefruit; it was a bright summer’s day, he would be leaving Privet Drive tomor¬row, his scar felt perfectly normal again, and he was going to watch the Quidditch World Cup. It was hard, just now, to feel worried about anything – even Lord Voldemort. ? — CHAPTER FOUR — Back to The Burrow By twelve o’clock next day, Harry’s trunk was packed with his school things, and all his most prized possessions – the Invisibility Cloak he had inherited from his father, the broom¬stick he had got from Sirius, the enchanted map of Hogwarts he had been given by Fred and George Weasley last year. He had emptied his hiding place under the loose floorboard of all food, double-checked every nook and cranny of his bedroom for forgotten spellbooks or quills, and taken down the chart on the wall counting the days down to September the first, on which he liked to cross off the days remaining until his return to Hogwarts. The atmosphere inside number four Privet Drive was extremely tense. The imminent arrival at their house of an assortment of wizards was making the Dursleys uptight and irritable. Uncle Vernon had looked downright alarmed when Harry informed him that the Weasleys would be arriving at five o’clock the very next day. ‘I hope you told them to dress properly, these people,’ he snarled at once. ‘I’ve seen the sort of stuff your lot wear. They’d better have the decency to put on normal clothes, that’s all.’ Harry felt a slight sense of foreboding. He had rarely seen Mr or Mrs Weasley wearing anything that the Dursleys would call ‘normal’. Their children might don Muggle clothing during the holidays, but Mr and Mrs Weasley usually wore long robes in varying states of shabbiness. Harry wasn’t bothered about what the neighbours would think, but he was anxious about how rude the Dursleys might be to the Weasleys if they turned up looking like their worst idea of wizards. Uncle Vernon had put on his best suit. To some people, this might have looked like a gesture of welcome, but Harry knew it was because Uncle Vernon wanted to look impressive and intimidating. Dudley, on the other hand, looked somehow diminished. This was not because the diet was at last taking effect, but due to fright. Dudley had emerged from his last encounter with a fully-grown wizard with a curly pig’s tail poking out of the seat of his trousers, and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had had to pay for its removal at a private hospi¬tal in London. It wasn’t altogether surprising, therefore, that Dudley kept running his hand nervously over his backside, and walking sideways from room to room, so as not to present the same target to the enemy. Lunch was an almost silent meal. Dudley didn’t even protest at the food (cottage cheese and grated celery). Aunt Petunia wasn’t eating anything at all. Her arms were folded, her lips were pursed and she seemed to be chewing her tongue, as though biting back the furious diatribe she longed to throw at Harry. ‘They’ll be driving, of course?’ Uncle Vernon barked across the table. ‘Er,’ said Harry. He hadn’t thought of that. How were the Weasleys going to pick him up? They didn’t have a car any more; the old Ford Anglia they had once owned was currently running wild in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. But Mr Weasley had borrowed a Ministry of Magic car last year; possibly he would do the same today? ‘I think so,’ said Harry. Uncle Vernon snorted into his moustache. Normally, Uncle Vernon would have asked what car Mr Weasley drove; he tended to judge other men on how big and expensive their cars were. But Harry doubted whether Uncle Vernon would have taken to Mr Weasley even if he drove a Ferrari. Harry spent most of the afternoon in his bedroom; he couldn’t stand watching Aunt Petunia peer out through the net curtains every few seconds, as though there had been a warn¬ing about an escaped rhinoceros. Finally, at a quarter to five, Harry went back downstairs and into the living room. Aunt Petunia was compulsively straightening cushions. Uncle Vernon was pretending to read the paper, but his tiny eyes were not moving, and Harry was sure he was really listen¬ing with all his might for the sound of an approaching car. Dudley was crammed into an armchair, his porky hands beneath him, clamped firmly around his bottom. Harry couldn’t take the tension; he left the room, and went and sat on the stairs in the hall, his eyes on his watch and his heart pumping fast from excitement and nerves. But five o’clock came and then went. Uncle Vernon, perspiring slightly in his suit, opened the front door, peered up and down the street, then withdrew his head quickly. ‘They’re late!’ he snarled at Harry. ‘I know,’ said Harry. ‘Maybe – er – the traffic’s bad, or some¬thing.’ Ten past five . then a quarter past five . Harry was starting to feel anxious himself now. At half past, he heard Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia conversing in terse mutters in the living room. ‘No consideration at all.’ ‘We might’ve had an engagement.’ ‘Maybe they think they’ll get invited to dinner if they’re late.’ ‘Well, they most certainly won’t be,’ said Uncle Vernon, and Harry heard him stand up and start pacing the living room. ‘They’ll take the boy and go, there’ll be no hanging around. That’s if they’re coming at all. Probably mistaken the day. I daresay their kind don’t set much store by punctuality. Either that or they drive some tinpot car that’s broken d-AAAAAAAARRRRRGH!’ Harry jumped up. From the other side of the living-room door came the sounds of the three Dursleys scrambling, panic-stricken, across the room. Next moment Dudley came flying into the hall, looking terrified. ‘What happened?’ said Harry. ‘What’s the matter?’ But Dudley didn’t seem able to speak. Hands still clamped over his buttocks, he waddled as fast as he could into the kitchen. Harry hurried into the living room. Loud hangings and scrapings were coming from behind the Dursleys’ boarded-up fireplace, which had a fake coal fire plugged in front of it. ‘What is it?’ gasped Aunt Petunia, who had backed into the wall and was staring, terrified, towards the fire. ‘What is it, Vernon?’ But they were left in doubt barely a second longer. Voices could be heard from inside the blocked fireplace. ‘Ouch! Fred, no – go back, go back, there’s been some kind of mistake – tell George not to – OUCH! George, no, there’s no room, go back quickly and tell Ron –’ ‘Maybe Harry can hear us, Dad – maybe he’ll be able to let us out –’ There was a loud hammering of fists on the boards behind the electric fire. ‘Harry? Harry, can you hear us?’ The Dursleys rounded on Harry like a pair of angry wolver¬ines. ‘What is this?’ growled Uncle Vernon. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘They – they’ve tried to get here by Floo powder,’ said Harry, fighting a mad desire to laugh. ‘They can travel by fire – only you’ve blocked the fireplace – hang on –’ He approached the fireplace and called through the boards. ‘Mr Weasley? Can you hear me?’ The hammering stopped. Somebody inside the chimney-piece said, ‘Shh!’ ‘Mr Weasley, it’s Harry . the fireplace has been blocked up. You won’t be able to get through there.’ ‘Damn!’ said Mr Weasley’s voice. ‘What on earth did they want to block up the fireplace for?’ ‘They’ve got an electric fire,’ Harry explained. ‘Really?’ said Mr Weasley’s voice excitedly. ‘Ecklectic, you say? With a plug? Gracious, I must see that . let’s think . ouch, Ron!’ Ron’s voice now joined the others’. ‘What are we doing here? Has something gone wrong?’ ‘Oh, no, Ron,’ came Fred’s voice, very sarcastically. ‘No, this is exactly where we wanted to end up.’ ‘Yeah, we’re having the time of our lives here,’ said George, whose voice sounded muffled, as though he was squashed against the wall. ‘Boys, boys .’ said Mr Weasley vaguely. ‘I’m trying to think what to do . yes . only way . stand back, Harry.’ Harry retreated to the sofa. Uncle Vernon, however, moved forwards. ‘Wait a moment!’ he bellowed at the fire. ‘What exactly are you going to –?’ BANG. The electric fire shot across the room as the boarded-up fire¬place burst outwards, expelling Mr Weasley, Fred, George and Ron in a cloud of rubble and loose chippings. Aunt Petunia shrieked and fell backwards over the coffee table; Uncle Vernon caught her before she hit the floor and gaped, speechless, at the Weasleys, all of whom had bright red hair, including Fred and George, who were identical to the last freckle. ‘That’s better,’ panted Mr Weasley, brushing dust from his long green robes and straightening his glasses. ‘Ah – you must be Harry’s aunt and uncle!’ Tall, thin and balding, he moved towards Uncle Vernon, his hand outstretched, but Uncle Vernon backed away several paces, dragging Aunt Petunia. Words utterly failed Uncle Vernon. His best suit was covered in white dust, which had settled in his hair and moustache and made him look as though he had just aged thirty years. ‘Er – yes – sorry about that,’ said Mr Weasley, lowering his hand and looking over his shoulder at the blasted fireplace. ‘It’s all my fault, it just didn’t occur to me that we wouldn’t be able to get out at the other end. I had your fireplace connected to the Floo Network, you see – just for an afternoon, you know, so we could get Harry. Muggle fireplaces aren’t supposed to be connected, strictly speaking – but I’ve got a useful contact at the Floo Regulation Panel and he fixed it for me. I can put it right in a jiffy, though, don’t worry. I’ll light a fire to send the boys back, and then I can repair your fireplace before I Disapparate.’ Harry was ready to bet that the Dursleys hadn’t understood a single word of this. They were still gaping at Mr Weasley, thun¬derstruck. Aunt Petunia staggered upright again, and hid behind Uncle Vernon. ‘Hello, Harry!’ said Mr Weasley brightly. ‘Got your trunk ready?’ ‘It’s upstairs,’ said Harry, grinning back. ‘We’ll get it,’ said Fred at once. Winking at Harry, he and George left the room. They knew where Harry’s bedroom was, having once rescued him from it in the dead of night. Harry suspected that Fred and George were hoping for a glimpse of Dudley; they had heard a lot about him from Harry. ‘Well,’ said Mr Weasley, swinging his arms slightly, while he tried to find words to break the very nasty silence. ‘Very – erm – very nice place you’ve got here.’ As the usually spotless living room was now covered in dust and bits of brick, this remark didn’t go down too well with the Dursleys. Uncle Vernon’s face purpled once more, and Aunt Petunia started chewing her tongue again. However, they seemed too scared to actually say anything. Mr Weasley was looking around. He loved everything to do with Muggles. Harry could see him itching to go and examine the television and the video recorder. ‘They run off eckeltricity, do they?’ he said knowledgeably. ‘Ah yes, I can see the plugs. I collect plugs,’ he added to Uncle Vernon. ‘And batteries. Got a very large collection of batteries. My wife thinks I’m mad, but there you are.’ Uncle Vernon clearly thought Mr Weasley was mad, too. He moved ever so slightly to the right, screening Aunt Petunia from view, as though he thought Mr Weasley might suddenly run at them and attack. Dudley suddenly reappeared in the room. Harry could hear the clunk of his trunk on the stairs, and knew that the sounds had scared Dudley out of the kitchen. Dudley edged along the wall, gazing at Mr Weasley with terrified eyes, and attempted to conceal himself behind his mother and father. Unfortunately, Uncle Vernon’s bulk, while sufficient to hide bony Aunt Petunia, was nowhere near enough to conceal Dudley. ‘Ah, this is your cousin, is it, Harry?’ said Mr Weasley, taking another brave stab at making conversation. ‘Yep,’ said Harry, ‘that’s Dudley.’ He and Ron exchanged glances and then quickly looked away from each other; the temptation to burst out laughing was almost overwhelming. Dudley was still clutching his bot¬tom as though afraid it might fall off. Mr Weasley, however, seemed genuinely concerned at Dudley’s peculiar behaviour. Indeed, from the tone of his voice when he next spoke, Harry was quite sure that Mr Weasley thought Dudley was quite as mad as the Dursleys thought he was, except that Mr Weasley felt sympathy rather than fear. ‘Having a good holiday, Dudley?’ he said kindly. Dudley whimpered. Harry saw his hands tighten still harder over his massive backside. Fred and George came back into the room, carrying Harry’s school trunk. They glanced around as they entered and spotted Dudley. Their faces cracked into identical, evil grins. ‘Ah, right,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Better get cracking, then.’ He pushed up the sleeves of his robes and took out his wand. Harry saw the Dursleys draw back against the wall as one. ‘Incendio!’ said Mr Weasley, pointing his wand at the hole in the wall behind him. Flames rose at once in the fireplace, crackling merrily as though they had been burning for hours. Mr Weasley took a small drawstring bag from his pocket, untied it, took a pinch of the powder inside and threw it onto the flames, which turned emerald green and roared higher than ever. ‘Off you go then, Fred,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Coming,’ said Fred. ‘Oh no – hang on –’ A bag of sweets had spilled out of Fred’s pocket and the con¬tents were now rolling in every direction – big, fat toffees in brightly coloured wrappers. Fred scrambled around, cramming them back into his pock¬et, then gave the Dursleys a cheery wave, stepped forward and walked right into the fire, saying, ‘The Burrow!’ Aunt Petunia gave a little shuddering gasp. There was a whooshing sound, and Fred vanished. ‘Right then, George,’ said Mr Weasley, ‘you and the trunk.’ Harry helped George carry the trunk forward into the flames, and turn it onto its end so that he could hold it better. Then, with a second whoosh, George had cried, ‘The Burrow!’ and vanished too. ‘Ron, you next,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘See you,’ said Ron brightly to the Dursleys. He grinned broadly at Harry, then stepped into the fire, shouted, ‘The Burrow!’ and disappeared. Now Harry and Mr Weasley alone remained. ‘Well . bye then,’ Harry said to the Dursleys. They didn’t say anything at all. Harry moved towards the fire, but just as he reached the edge of the hearth, Mr Weasley put out a hand and held him back. He was looking at the Dursleys in amazement. ‘Harry said goodbye to you,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you hear him?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Harry muttered to Mr Weasley. ‘Honestly, I don’t care.’ Mr Weasley did not remove his hand from Harry’s shoulder. ‘You aren’t going to see your nephew ’til next summer,’ he said to Uncle Vernon in mild indignation. ‘Surely you’re going to say goodbye?’ Uncle Vernon’s face worked furiously. The idea of being taught consideration by a man who had just blasted away half his living-room wall seemed to be causing him intense suffering. But Mr Weasley’s wand was still in his hand, and Uncle Vernon’s tiny eyes darted to it once, before he said, very resent¬fully, ‘Goodbye, then.’ ‘See you,’ said Harry, putting one foot forward into the green flames, which felt pleasantly like warm breath. At that moment, however, a horrible gagging sound erupted behind him, and Aunt Petunia started to scream. Harry wheeled around. Dudley was no longer standing behind his parents. He was kneeling beside the coffee table, and he was gagging and spluttering on a foot-long, purple, slimy thing that was protruding from his mouth. One bewildered second later, Harry realised that the foot-long thing was Dudley’s tongue – and that a brightly coloured toffee-wrapper lay on the floor before him. Aunt Petunia hurled herself onto the ground beside Dudley, seized the end of his swollen tongue and attempted to wrench it out of his mouth; unsurprisingly, Dudley yelled and splut¬tered worse than ever, trying to fight her off. Uncle Vernon was bellowing and waving his arms around, and Mr Weasley had to shout to make himself heard. ‘Not to worry, I can sort him out!’ he yelled, advancing on Dudley with his wand outstretched, but Aunt Petunia screamed worse than ever and threw herself on top of Dudley, shielding him from Mr Weasley. ‘No, really!’ said Mr Weasley desperately. ‘It’s a simple process – it was the toffee – my son Fred – real practical joker – but it’s only an Engorgement Charm – at least, I think it is – please, I can correct it –’ But far from being reassured, the Dursleys became more panic-stricken; Aunt Petunia was sobbing hysterically, tugging Dudley’s tongue as though determined to rip it out; Dudley appeared to be suffocating under the combined pressure of his mother and his tongue, and Uncle Vernon, who had lost con¬trol completely, seized a china figure from on top of the side¬board, and threw it very hard at Mr Weasley, who ducked, causing the ornament to shatter in the blasted fireplace. ‘Now really!’ said Mr Weasley, angrily, brandishing his wand. ‘I’m trying to help!’ Bellowing like a wounded hippo, Uncle Vernon snatched up another ornament. ‘Harry, go! Just go!’ Mr Weasley shouted, his wand on Uncle Vernon. ‘I’ll sort this out!’ Harry didn’t want to miss the fun, but Uncle Vernon’s second ornament narrowly missed his left ear, and on balance he thought it best to leave the situation to Mr Weasley. He stepped into the fire, looking over his shoulder as he said, ‘The Burrow!’; his last fleeting glimpse of the living room was of Mr Weasley blasting a third ornament out of Uncle Vernon’s hand with his wand, Aunt Petunia screaming and lying on top of Dudley, and Dudley’s tongue lolling around like a great slimy python. But next moment Harry had begun to spin very fast, and the Dursleys’ living room was whipped out of sight in a rush of emerald green flames. ? — CHAPTER FIVE — Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes Harry spun faster and faster, elbows tucked tightly to his sides, blurred fireplaces flashing past him, until he started to feel sick and closed his eyes. Then, when at last he felt himself slowing down, he threw out his hands, and brought himself to a halt in time to prevent himself falling face forwards out of the Weasleys’ kitchen fire. ‘Did he eat it?’ said Fred excitedly, holding out a hand to pull Harry to his feet. ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, straightening up. ‘What was it?’ ‘Ton-Tongue Toffee,’ said Fred brightly. ‘George and I invent¬ed them, we’ve been looking for someone to test them on all summer .’ The tiny kitchen exploded with laughter; Harry looked around and saw that Ron and George were sitting at the scrubbed wooden table with two red-haired people Harry had never seen before, though he knew immediately who they must be: Bill and Charlie, the two eldest Weasley brothers. ‘How’re you doing, Harry?’ said the nearer of the two, grin¬ning at him and holding out a large hand, which Harry shook, feeling calluses and blisters under his fingers. This had to be Charlie, who worked with dragons in Romania. Charlie was built like the twins, shorter and stockier than Percy and Ron, who were both long and lanky. He had a broad, good-natured face, which was weather-beaten and so freckly that he looked almost tanned; his arms were muscly, and one of them had a large, shiny burn on it. Bill got to his feet, smiling, and also shook Harry’s hand. Bill came as something of a surprise. Harry knew that he worked for the wizarding bank, Gringotts, that he had been Head Boy of Hogwarts, and had always imagined Bill to be an older version of Percy; fussy about rule-breaking and fond of bossing everyone around. However, Bill was – there was no other word for it – cool. He was tall, with long hair that he had tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an earring with what looked like a fang dangling from it. His clothes would not have looked out of place at a rock concert, except that Harry recognised his boots to be made, not of leather, but of dragon hide. Before any of them could say anything else, there was a faint popping noise, and Mr Weasley appeared out of thin air at George’s shoulder. He was looking angrier than Harry had ever seen him. ‘That wasn’t funny, Fred!’ he shouted. ‘What on earth did you give that Muggle boy?’ ‘I didn’t give him anything,’ said Fred, with another evil grin. ‘I just dropped it . it was his fault he went and ate it, I never told him to.’ ‘You dropped it on purpose!’ roared Mr Weasley. ‘You knew he’d eat it, you knew he was on a diet –’ ‘How big did his tongue get?’ George asked eagerly. ‘It was four foot long before his parents would let me shrink it!’ Harry and the Weasleys roared with laughter again. ‘It isn’t funny!’ Mr Weasley shouted. ‘That sort of behaviour seriously undermines wizard–Muggle relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles, and my own sons –’ ‘We didn’t give it to him because he was a Muggle!’ said Fred indignantly. ‘No, we gave it to him because he’s a great bullying git,’ said George. ‘Isn’t he, Harry?’ ‘Yeah, he is, Mr Weasley,’ said Harry earnestly. ‘That’s not the point!’ raged Mr Weasley. ‘You wait until I tell your mother –’ ‘Tell me what?’ said a voice behind them. Mrs Weasley had just entered the kitchen. She was a short, plump woman with a very kind face, though her eyes were presently narrowed with suspicion. ‘Oh, hello, Harry dear,’ she said, spotting him and smiling. Then her eyes snapped back to her husband. ‘Tell me what, Arthur?’ Mr Weasley hesitated. Harry could tell that, however angry he was with Fred and George, he hadn’t really intended to tell Mrs Weasley what had happened. There was a silence, while Mr Weasley eyed his wife nervously. Then two girls appeared in the kitchen doorway behind Mrs Weasley. One, with very bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth, was Harry and Ron’s friend, Hermione Granger. The other, who was small and red-haired, was Ron’s younger sister, Ginny. Both of them smiled at Harry, who grinned back, which made Ginny go scarlet – she had been very taken with Harry ever since his first visit to The Burrow. ‘Tell me what, Arthur?’ Mrs Weasley repeated, in a danger¬ous sort of voice. ‘It’s nothing, Molly,’ mumbled Mr Weasley, ‘Fred and George just – but I’ve had words with them –’ ‘What have they done this time?’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘If it’s got anything to do with Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes –’ ‘Why don’t you show Harry where he’s sleeping, Ron?’ said Hermione from the doorway. ‘He knows where he’s sleeping,’ said Ron. ‘In my room, he slept there last –’ ‘We can all go,’ said Hermione, pointedly. ‘Oh,’ said Ron, cottoning on. ‘Right.’ ‘Yeah, we’ll come, too,’ said George – ‘You stay where you are!’ snarled Mrs Weasley. Harry and Ron edged out of the kitchen, and they, Hermione and Ginny set off along the narrow hallway and up the rickety staircase that zig-zagged through the house to the upper storeys. ‘What are Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes?’ Harry asked, as they climbed. Ron and Ginny both laughed, although Hermione didn’t. ‘Mum found this stack of order forms when she was clean¬ing Fred and George’s room,’ said Ron quietly. ‘Great long price-lists for stuff they’ve invented. Joke stuff, you know. Fake wands and trick sweets, loads of stuff. It was brilliant, I never knew they’d been inventing all that .’ ‘We’ve been hearing explosions out of their room for ages, but we never thought they were actually making things,’ said Ginny, ‘we thought they just liked the noise.’ ‘Only, most of the stuff – well, all of it, really – was a bit dangerous,’ said Ron, ‘and, you know, they were planning to sell it at Hogwarts to make some money, and Mum went mad at them. Told them they weren’t allowed to make any more of it, and burnt all the order forms . she’s furious at them any¬way. They didn’t get as many O.W.Ls as she expected.’ O.W.Ls were Ordinary Wizarding Levels, the examinations Hogwarts students took at the age of fifteen. ‘And then there was this big row,’ Ginny said, ‘because Mum wants them to go into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and they told her all they want to do is open a joke-shop.’ Just then, a door on the second landing opened, and a face poked out wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a very annoyed expression. ‘Hi, Percy,’ said Harry. ‘Oh, hello, Harry,’ said Percy. ‘I was wondering who was making all the noise. I’m trying to work in here, you know – I’ve got a report to finish for the office – and it’s rather difficult to concentrate when people keep thundering up and down the stairs.’ ‘We’re not thundering,’ said Ron irritably. ‘We’re walking. Sorry if we’ve disturbed the top-secret workings of the Ministry of Magic.’ ‘What are you working on?’ said Harry. ‘A report for the Department of International Magical Co-operation,’ said Percy smugly. ‘We’re trying to standardise cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin – leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost three per cent a year –’ ‘That’ll change the world, that report will,’ said Ron. ‘Front page of the Daily Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks.’ Percy went slightly pink. ‘You might sneer, Ron,’ he said heatedly, ‘but unless some sort of international law is imposed we might well find the market flooded with flimsy, shallow-bottomed products which seriously endanger –’ ‘Yeah, yeah, all right,’ said Ron, and he started off upstairs again. Percy slammed his bedroom door shut. As Harry, Hermione and Ginny followed Ron up three more flights of stairs, shouts from the kitchen below echoed up to them. It sounded as though Mr Weasley had told Mrs Weasley about the toffees. The room at the top of the house where Ron slept looked much as it had done the last time that Harry had come to stay; the same posters of Ron’s favourite Quidditch team, the Chudley Cannons, were whirling and waving on the walls and sloping ceiling, and the fishtank on the windowsill which had previously held frog-spawn now contained one extremely large frog. Ron’s old rat, Scabbers, was here no more, but instead there was the tiny grey owl that had delivered Ron’s letter to Harry in Privet Drive. It was hopping up and down in a small cage, and twittering madly. ‘Shut up, Pig,’ said Ron, edging his way between two of the four beds that had been squeezed into the room. ‘Fred and George are in here with us, because Bill and Charlie are in their room,’ he told Harry. ‘Percy gets to keep his room all to himself because he’s got to work.’ ‘Er – why are you calling that owl Pig?’ Harry asked Ron. ‘Because he’s being stupid,’ said Ginny. ‘Its proper name is Pigwidgeon.’ ‘Yeah, and that’s not a stupid name at all,’ said Ron sarcasti¬cally. ‘Ginny named him,’ he explained to Harry. ‘She reckons it’s sweet. And I tried to change it, but it was too late, he won’t answer to anything else. So now he’s Pig. I’ve got to keep him up here because he annoys Errol and Hermes. He annoys me, too, come to that.’ Pigwidgeon zoomed happily around his cage, hooting shrilly. Harry knew Ron too well to take him seriously. He had moaned continually about his old rat Scabbers, but had been most upset when Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, appeared to have eaten him. ‘Where’s Crookshanks?’ Harry asked Hermione now. ‘Out in the garden, I expect,’ she said. ‘He likes chasing gnomes, he’s never seen any before.’ ‘Percy’s enjoying work, then?’ said Harry, sitting down on one of the beds and watching the Chudley Cannons zooming in and out of the posters on the ceiling. ‘Enjoying it?’ said Ron darkly. ‘I don’t reckon he’d come home if Dad didn’t make him. He’s obsessed. Just don’t get him onto the subject of his boss. According to Mr Crouch . as I was saying to Mr Crouch . Mr Crouch is of the opinion . Mr Crouch was telling me . They’ll be announcing their engagement any day now.’ ‘Have you had a good summer, Harry?’ said Hermione. ‘Did you get our food parcels and everything?’ ‘Yeah, thanks a lot,’ said Harry. ‘They saved my life, those cakes.’ ‘And have you heard from –?’ Ron began, but at a look from Hermione he fell silent. Harry knew Ron had been about to ask about Sirius. Ron and Hermione had been so deeply involved in helping Sirius escape from the Ministry of Magic that they were almost as concerned about Harry’s godfather as he was. However, discussing him in front of Ginny was a bad idea. Nobody but themselves and Professor Dumbledore knew about how Sirius had escaped, or believed in his innocence. ‘I think they’ve stopped arguing,’ said Hermione, to cover the awkward moment, because Ginny was looking curiously from Ron to Harry. ‘Shall we go down and help your mum with dinner?’ ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Ron. The four of them left Ron’s room and went back downstairs, to find Mrs Weasley alone in the kitchen, looking extremely bad-tempered. ‘We’re eating out in the garden,’ she said when they came in. ‘There’s just not room for eleven people in here. Could you take the plates outside, girls? Bill and Charlie are setting up the tables. Knives and forks, please, you two,’ she said to Ron and Harry, pointing her wand a little more vigorously than she had intended at a pile of potatoes in the sink, which shot out of their skins so fast that they ricocheted off the walls and ceilings. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she snapped, now directing her wand at a dustpan, which hopped off the side and started skating across the floor, scooping up the potatoes. ‘Those two!’ she burst out savagely, now pulling pots and pans out of a cupboard, and Harry knew she meant Fred and George. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to them, I really don’t. No ambition, unless you count making as much trouble as they possibly can .’ She slammed a large copper saucepan down on the kitchen table and began to wave her wand around inside it. A creamy sauce poured from the wand tip as she stirred. ‘It’s not as though they haven’t got brains,’ she continued irritably, taking the saucepan over to the stove and lighting it with a further poke of her wand, ‘but they’re wasting them, and unless they pull themselves together soon, they’ll be in real trouble. I’ve had more owls from Hogwarts about them than the rest put together. If they carry on the way they’re going, they’ll end up in front of the Improper Use of Magic Office.’ Mrs Weasley jabbed her wand at the cutlery drawer, which shot open. Harry and Ron both jumped out of the way as several knives soared out of it, flew across the kitchen and began chopping the potatoes, which had just been tipped back into the sink by the dustpan. ‘I don’t know where we went wrong with them,’ said Mrs Weasley, putting down her wand and starting to pull out still more saucepans. ‘It’s been the same for years, one thing after another, and they won’t listen to – OH, NOT AGAIN!’ She had picked up her wand from the table, and it had emitted a loud squeak and turned into a giant rubber mouse. ‘One of their fake wands again!’ she shouted. ‘How many times have I told those two not to leave them lying around?’ She grabbed her real wand and turned around to find that the sauce on the stove was smoking. ‘C’mon,’ Ron said hurriedly to Harry, seizing a handful of cutlery from the open drawer, ‘let’s go and help Bill and Charlie.’ They left Mrs Weasley, and headed out of the back door into the yard. They had only gone a few paces when Hermione’s bandy-legged, ginger cat Crookshanks came pelting out of the garden, bottle-brush tail held high in the air, chasing what looked like a muddy potato on legs. Harry recognised it instantly as a gnome. Barely ten inches high, its horny little feet pattered very fast as it sprinted across the yard and dived headlong into one of the Wellington boots that lay scattered around the door. Harry could hear the gnome giggling madly as Crookshanks inserted a paw into the boot, trying to reach it. Meanwhile, a very loud crashing noise was coming from the other side of the house. The source of the commotion was revealed as they entered the garden and saw that Bill and Charlie both had their wands out, and were making two battered old tables fly high above the lawn, smashing into each other, each attempting to knock the other’s out of the air. Fred and George were cheering; Ginny was laughing, and Hermione was hovering near the hedge, apparently torn between amusement and anxiety. Bill’s table caught Charlie’s with a huge bang, and knocked one of its legs off. There was a clatter from overhead, and they all looked up to see Percy’s head poking out of a window on the second floor. ‘Will you keep it down?’ he bellowed. ‘Sorry, Perce,’ said Bill, grinning. ‘How’re the cauldron bottoms coming on?’ ‘Very badly,’ said Percy peevishly, and he slammed the win¬dow shut again. Chuckling, Bill and Charlie directed the tables safely onto the grass, end to end, and then, with a flick of his wand, Bill reattached the table leg, and conjured tablecloths from nowhere. By seven o’clock, the two tables were groaning under dishes and dishes of Mrs Weasley’s excellent cooking, and the nine Weasleys, Harry and Hermione were settling themselves down to eat beneath a clear, deep-blue sky. To somebody who had been living on meals of increasingly stale cake all summer, this was paradise, and at first, Harry listened rather than talked, as he helped himself to chicken-and-ham pie, boiled potatoes and salad. At the far end of the table, Percy was telling his father all about his report on cauldron bottoms. ‘I’ve told Mr Crouch that I’ll have it ready by Tuesday,’ Percy was saying pompously. ‘That’s a bit sooner than he expected it, but I like to keep on top of things. I think he’ll be grateful I’ve done it in good time. I mean, it’s extremely busy in our depart¬ment just now, what with all the arrangements for the World Cup. We’re just not getting the support we need from the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Ludo Bagman –’ ‘I like Ludo,’ said Mr Weasley mildly. ‘He was the one who got us such good tickets for the Cup. I did him a bit of a favour: his brother, Otto, got into a spot of trouble – a lawn-mower with unnatural powers – I smoothed the whole thing over.’ ‘Oh, Bagman’s likeable enough, of course,’ said Percy dismiss¬ively, ‘but how he ever got to be Head of Department . when I compare him to Mr Crouch! I can’t see Mr Crouch losing a member of our department and not trying to find out what’s happened to them. You realise Bertha Jorkins has been missing for over a month now? Went on holiday to Albania and never came back?’ ‘Yes, I was asking Ludo about that,’ said Mr Weasley, frowning. ‘He says Bertha’s got lost plenty of times before now – though I must say, if it was someone in my department, I’d be worried .’ ‘Oh, Bertha’s hopeless, all right,’ said Percy. ‘I hear she’s been shunted from department to department for years, much more trouble than she’s worth . but all the same, Bagman ought to be trying to find her. Mr Crouch has been taking a personal interest – she worked in our department at one time, you know, and I think Mr Crouch was quite fond of her – but Bagman just keeps laughing and saying she probably misread the map and ended up in Australia instead of Albania. However,’ Percy heaved an impressive sigh, and took a deep swig of elderflower wine, ‘we’ve got quite enough on our plates at the Department of International Magical Co-operation without trying to find members of other departments too. As you know, we’ve got another big event to organise right after the World Cup.’ He cleared his throat significantly and looked down towards the end of the table where Harry, Ron and Hermione were sit¬ting. ‘You know the one I’m talking about, Father.’ He raised his voice slightly. ‘The top-secret one.’ Ron rolled his eyes and muttered to Harry and Hermione, ‘He’s been trying to get us to ask what that event is ever since he started work. Probably an exhibition of thick-bottomed cauldrons.’ In the middle of the table, Mrs Weasley was arguing with Bill about his earring, which seemed to be a recent acquisition. ‘. with a horrible great fang on it, really, Bill, what do they say at the bank?’ ‘Mum, no one at the bank gives a damn how I dress as long as I bring home plenty of treasure,’ said Bill patiently. ‘And your hair’s getting silly, dear,’ said Mrs Weasley, finger¬ing her wand lovingly. ‘I wish you’d let me give it a trim .’ ‘I like it,’ said Ginny, who was sitting beside Bill. ‘You’re so old-fashioned, Mum. Anyway, it’s nowhere near as long as Professor Dumbledore’s .’ Next to Mrs Weasley, Fred, George and Charlie were all talking spiritedly about the World Cup. ‘It’s got to be Ireland,’ said Charlie thickly, through a mouth¬ful of potato. ‘They flattened Peru in the semi-finals.’ ‘Bulgaria have got Viktor Krum, though,’ said Fred. ‘Krum’s one decent player, Ireland have got seven,’ said Charlie shortly. ‘I wish England had got through, though. That was embarrassing, that was.’ ‘What happened?’ said Harry eagerly, regretting more than ever his isolation from the wizarding world when he was stuck in Privet Drive. Harry was passionate about Quidditch. He had played as Seeker on the Gryffindor house Quidditch team ever since his first year at Hogwarts and owned a Firebolt, one of the best racing brooms in the world. ‘Went down to Transylvania, three hundred and ninety to ten,’ said Charlie gloomily. ‘Shocking performance. And Wales lost to Uganda, and Scotland were slaughtered by Luxembourg.’ Mr Weasley conjured up candles to light the darkening garden before they had their pudding (home-made strawberry ice-cream), and by the time they had finished, moths were fluttering low over the table and the warm air was perfumed with the smells of grass and honeysuckle. Harry was feeling extremely well fed and at peace with the world as he watched several gnomes sprinting through the rose bushes, laughing madly and closely pursued by Crookshanks. Ron looked carefully up the table to check that the rest of the family were all busy talking, then he said very quietly to Harry, ‘So – have you heard from Sirius lately?’ Hermione looked round, listening closely. ‘Yeah,’ said Harry softly, ‘twice. He sounds OK. I wrote to him the day before yesterday. He might write back while I’m here.’ He suddenly remembered the reason he had written to Sirius and, for a moment, was on the verge of telling Ron and Hermione about his scar hurting again, and about the dream which had awoken him . but he really didn’t want to worry them just now, not when he himself was feeling so happy and peaceful. ‘Look at the time,’ Mrs Weasley said suddenly, checking her wristwatch. ‘You really should be in bed, the whole lot of you, you’ll be up at the crack of dawn to get to the Cup. Harry, if you leave your school list out, I’ll get your things for you tomorrow in Diagon Alley. I’m getting everyone else’s. There might not be time after the World Cup, the match went on for five days last time.’ ‘Wow – hope it does this time!’ said Harry enthusiastically. ‘Well, I certainly don’t,’ said Percy sanctimoniously. ‘I shud¬der to think what the state of my in-tray would be if I was away from work for five days.’ ‘Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?’ said Fred. ‘That was a sample of fertiliser from Norway!’ said Percy, going very red in the face. ‘It was nothing personal!’ ‘It was,’ Fred whispered to Harry, as they got up from the table. ‘We sent it.’ ? — CHAPTER SIX — The Portkey Harry felt as though he had barely lain down to sleep in Ron’s room when he was being shaken awake by Mrs Weasley. ‘Time to go, Harry, dear,’ she whispered, moving away to wake Ron. Harry felt around for his glasses, put them on and sat up. It was still dark outside. Ron muttered indistinctly as his mother roused him. At the foot of Harry’s mattress he saw two large, dishevelled shapes emerging from tangles of blankets. ‘ ’S’time already?’ said Fred groggily. They dressed in silence, too sleepy to talk, then, yawning and stretching, the four of them headed downstairs into the kitchen. Mrs Weasley was stirring the contents of a large pot on the stove, while Mr Weasley was sitting at the table, checking a sheaf of large parchment tickets. He looked up as the boys entered, and spread his arms so that they could see his clothes more clearly. He was wearing what appeared to be a golfing jumper and a very old pair of jeans, slightly too big for him and held up with a thick leather belt. ‘What d’you think?’ he asked anxiously. ‘We’re supposed to go incognito – do I look like a Muggle, Harry?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, smiling, ‘very good.’ ‘Where’re Bill and Charlie and Per-Per-Percy?’ said George, failing to stifle a huge yawn. ‘Well, they’re Apparating, aren’t they?’ said Mrs Weasley, heaving the large pot over to the table and starting to ladle porridge into bowls. ‘So they can have a bit of a lie-in.’ Harry knew that Apparating was very difficult; it meant disappearing from one place and reappearing almost instantly in another. ‘So they’re still in bed?’ said Fred grumpily, pulling his bowl of porridge towards him. ‘Why can’t we Apparate, too?’ ‘Because you’re not of age and you haven’t got your test,’ snapped Mrs Weasley. ‘And where have those girls got to?’ She bustled out of the kitchen and they heard her climbing the stairs. ‘You have to pass a test to Apparate?’ Harry asked. ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Weasley, tucking the tickets safely into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘The Department of Magical Transportation had to fine a couple of people the other day for Apparating without a licence. It’s not easy, Apparition, and when it’s not done properly it can lead to nasty complications. This pair I’m talking about went and splinched themselves.’ Everyone around the table except Harry winced. ‘Er – splinched?’ said Harry. ‘They left half of themselves behind,’ said Mr Weasley, now spooning large amounts of treacle onto his porridge. ‘So, of course, they were stuck. Couldn’t move either way. Had to wait for the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad to sort them out. Meant a fair old bit of paperwork, I can tell you, what with the Muggles who spotted the body parts they’d left behind .’ Harry had a sudden vision of a pair of legs and an eyeball lying abandoned on the pavement of Privet Drive. ‘Were they OK?’ he asked, startled. ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Weasley matter-of-factly. ‘But they got a heavy fine, and I don’t think they’ll be trying it again in a hurry. You don’t mess around with Apparition. There are plenty of adult wizards who don’t bother with it. Prefer brooms – slower, but safer.’ ‘But Bill and Charlie and Percy can all do it?’ ‘Charlie had to take the test twice,’ said Fred, grinning. ‘He failed first time, Apparated five miles south of where he meant to, right on top of some poor old dear doing her shopping, remember?’ ‘Yes, well, he passed second time,’ said Mrs Weasley, march¬ing back into the kitchen amid hearty sniggers. ‘Percy only passed two weeks ago,’ said George. ‘He’s been Apparating downstairs every morning since, just to prove he can.’ There were footsteps down the passageway and Hermione and Ginny came into the kitchen, both looking pale and drowsy. ‘Why do we have to be up so early?’ Ginny said, rubbing her eyes and sitting down at the table. ‘We’ve got a bit of a walk,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Walk?’ said Harry. ‘What, are we walking to the World Cup?’ ‘No, no, that’s miles away,’ said Mr Weasley, smiling. ‘We only need to walk a short way. It’s just that it’s very difficult for a large number of wizards to congregate without attracting Muggle attention. We have to be very careful about how we travel at the best of times, and on a huge occasion like the Quidditch World Cup –’ ‘George!’ said Mrs Weasley sharply, and they all jumped. ‘What?’ said George, in an innocent tone that deceived nobody. ‘What is that in your pocket?’ ‘Nothing!’ ‘Don’t you lie to me!’ Mrs Weasley pointed her wand at George’s pocket and said, ‘Accio!’ Several small, brightly coloured objects zoomed out of George’s pocket; he made a grab for them but missed, and they sped right into Mrs Weasley’s outstretched hand. ‘We told you to destroy them!’ said Mrs Weasley furiously, holding up what were unmistakeably more Ton-Tongue Toffees. ‘We told you to get rid of the lot! Empty your pockets, go on, both of you!’ It was an unpleasant scene; the twins had evidently been trying to smuggle as many toffees out of the house as possible, and it was only by using her Summoning Charm that Mrs Weasley managed to find them all. ‘Accio! Accio! Accio!’ she shouted, and toffees zoomed from all sorts of unlikely places, including the lining of George’s jacket and the turn-ups of Fred’s jeans. ‘We spent six months developing those!’ Fred shouted at his mother, as she threw the toffees away. ‘Oh, a fine way to spend six months!’ she shrieked. ‘No won¬der you didn’t get more O.W.Ls!’ All in all, the atmosphere was not very friendly as they made their departure. Mrs Weasley was still glowering as she kissed Mr Weasley on the cheek, though not nearly as much as the twins, who had each hoisted their rucksacks onto their backs and walked out without a word to her. ‘Well, have a lovely time,’ said Mrs Weasley, ‘and behave yourselves,’ she called after the twins’ retreating backs, but they did not look back or answer. ‘I’ll send Bill, Charlie and Percy along around midday,’ Mrs Weasley said to Mr Weasley, as he, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny set off across the dark yard after Fred and George. It was chilly and the moon was still out. Only a dull, green¬ish tinge along the horizon to their right showed that daybreak was drawing closer. Harry, having been thinking about thousands of wizards speeding towards the Quidditch World Cup, sped up to walk with Mr Weasley. ‘So how does everyone get there without all the Muggles noticing?’ he asked. ‘It’s been a massive organisational problem,’ sighed Mr Weasley. ‘The trouble is, about a hundred thousand wizards turn up to the World Cup, and of course we just haven’t got a magical site big enough to accommodate them all. There are places Muggles can’t penetrate, but imagine trying to pack a hundred thousand wizards into Diagon Alley or platform nine and three-quarters. So we had to find a nice deserted moor, and set up as many anti-Muggle precautions as possible. The whole Ministry’s been working on it for months. Firstly, of course, we have to stagger the arrivals. People with cheaper tickets have to arrive two weeks beforehand. A limited number use Muggle transport, but we can’t have too many clogging up their buses and trains – remember, wizards are coming from all over the world. Some Apparate, of course, but we have to set up safe points for them to appear, well away from Muggles. I believe there’s a handy wood they’re using as the Apparition point. For those who don’t want to Apparate, or can’t, we use Portkeys. They’re objects that are used to transport wizards from one spot to another at a prearranged time. You can do large groups at a time if you need to. There have been two hundred Portkeys placed at strategic points around Britain, and the nearest one to us is up the top of Stoatshead Hill, so that’s where we’re headed.’ Mr Weasley pointed ahead of them, where a large black mass rose beyond the village of Ottery St Catchpole. ‘What sort of objects are Portkeys?’ said Harry curiously. ‘Well, they can be anything,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Unobtrusive things, obviously, so Muggles don’t go picking them up and playing with them . stuff they’ll just think is litter .’ They trudged down the dark, dank lane towards the village, the silence broken only by their footsteps. The sky lightened very slowly as they made their way through the village, its inky blackness diluting to deepest blue. Harry’s hands and feet were freezing. Mr Weasley kept checking his watch. They didn’t have breath to spare for talking as they began to climb Stoatshead Hill, stumbling occasionally in hidden rabbit holes, slipping on thick black tuffets of grass. Each breath Harry took was sharp in his chest, and his legs were starting to seize up when at last his feet found level ground. ‘Whew,’ panted Mr Weasley, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his sweater. ‘Well, we’ve made good time – we’ve got ten minutes .’ Hermione came over the crest of the hill last, clutching a stitch in her side. ‘Now we just need the Portkey,’ said Mr Weasley, replacing his glasses and squinting around at the ground. ‘It won’t be big . come on .’ They spread out, searching. They had only been at it for a couple of minutes, however, when a shout rent the still air. ‘Over here, Arthur! Over here, son, we’ve got it!’ Two tall figures were silhouetted against the starry sky on the other side of the hilltop. ‘Amos!’ said Mr Weasley, smiling as he strode over to the man who had shouted. The rest of them followed. Mr Weasley was shaking hands with a ruddy-faced wizard with a scrubby brown beard, who was holding a mouldy-looking old boot in his other hand. ‘This is Amos Diggory, everyone,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. And I think you know his son, Cedric?’ Cedric Diggory was an extremely handsome boy of around seventeen. He was captain and Seeker of the Hufflepuff house Quidditch team at Hogwarts. ‘Hi,’ said Cedric, looking around at them all. Everybody said ‘Hi’ back except Fred and George, who merely nodded. They had never quite forgiven Cedric for beat¬ing their team, Gryffindor, in the first Quidditch match of the previous year. ‘Long walk, Arthur?’ Cedric’s father asked. ‘Not too bad,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘We live just on the other side of the village there. You?’ ‘Had to get up at two, didn’t we, Ced? I tell you, I’ll be glad when he’s got his Apparition test. Still . not complaining . Quidditch World Cup, wouldn’t miss it for a sackful of Galleons – and the tickets cost about that. Mind you, looks like I got off easy .’ Amos Diggory peered good-naturedly around at the three Weasley boys, Harry, Hermione and Ginny. ‘All these yours, Arthur?’ ‘Oh, no, only the redheads,’ said Mr Weasley, pointing out his children. ‘This is Hermione, friend of Ron’s – and Harry, another friend –’ ‘Merlin’s beard,’ said Amos Diggory, his eyes widening. ‘Harry? Harry Potter?’ ‘Er – yeah,’ said Harry. Harry was used to people looking curiously at him when they met him, used to the way their eyes moved at once to the lightning scar on his forehead, but it always made him feel uncomfortable. ‘Ced’s talked about you, of course,’ said Amos Diggory. ‘Told us all about playing against you last year . I said to him, I said – Ced, that’ll be something to tell your grandchildren, that will . you beat Harry Potter!’ Harry couldn’t think of any reply to this, so he remained silent. Fred and George were both scowling again. Cedric looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Harry fell off his broom, Dad,’ he muttered. ‘I told you . it was an accident .’ ‘Yes, but you didn’t fall off, did you?’ roared Amos genially, slapping his son on his back. ‘Always modest, our Ced, always the gentleman . but the best man won, I’m sure Harry’d say the same, wouldn’t you, eh? One falls off his broom, one stays on, you don’t need to be a genius to tell which one’s the better flier!’ ‘Must be nearly time,’ said Mr Weasley quickly, pulling out his watch again. ‘Do you know whether we’re waiting for any more, Amos?’ ‘No, the Lovegoods have been there for a week already and the Fawcetts couldn’t get tickets,’ said Mr Diggory. ‘There aren’t any more of us in this area, are there?’ ‘Not that I know of,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Yes, it’s a minute off . we’d better get ready. He looked around at Harry and Hermione. ‘You just need to touch the Portkey, that’s all, a finger will do –’ With difficulty, owing to the bulky backpacks, the nine of them crowded around the old boot held out by Amos Diggory. They all stood there, in a tight circle, as a chill breeze swept over the hilltop. Nobody spoke. It suddenly occurred to Harry how odd this would look if a Muggle were to walk up here now . nine people, two grown men, clutching this manky old boot in the semi-darkness, waiting . — CHAPTER SEVEN — Bagman and Crouch Harry disentangled himself from Ron and got to his feet. They had arrived on what appeared to be a deserted stretch of misty moor. In front of them was a pair of tired and grumpy-looking wizards, one of whom was holding a large gold watch, the other a thick roll of parchment and a quill. Both were dressed as Muggles, though very inexpertly; the man with the watch wore a tweed suit with thigh-length galoshes; his colleague, a kilt and a poncho. ‘Morning, Basil,’ said Mr Weasley, picking up the boot and handing it to the kilted wizard, who threw it into a large box of used Portkeys beside him; Harry could see an old newspaper, an empty drinks can and a punctured football. ‘Hello there, Arthur,’ said Basil wearily. ‘Not on duty, eh? It’s all right for some . we’ve been here all night . you’d better get out of the way, we’ve got a big party coming in from the Black Forest at five fifteen. Hang on, I’ll find your campsite . Weasley . Weasley .’ He consulted his parchment list. ‘About a quarter of a mile’s walk over there, first field you come to. Site manager’s called Mr Roberts. Diggory . second field . ask for Mr Payne.’ ‘Thanks, Basil,’ said Mr Weasley, and he beckoned everyone to follow him. They set off across the deserted moor, unable to make out much through the mist. After about twenty minutes, a small stone cottage next to a gate swam into view. Beyond it, Harry could just make out the ghostly shapes of hundreds and hundreds of tents, rising up the gentle slope of a large field towards a dark wood on the horizon. They said goodbye to the Diggorys, and approached the cottage door. A man was standing in the doorway, looking out at the tents. Harry knew at a glance that this was the only real Muggle for several acres. When he heard their footsteps, he turned his head to look at them. ‘Morning!’ said Mr Weasley brightly. ‘Morning,’ said the Muggle. ‘Would you be Mr Roberts?’ ‘Aye, I would,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘And who’re you?’ ‘Weasley – two tents, booked a couple of days ago?’ ‘Aye,’ said Mr Roberts, consulting a list tacked to the door. ‘You’ve got a space up by the wood there. Just the one night?’ ‘That’s it,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘You’ll be paying now, then?’ said Mr Roberts. ‘Ah – right – certainly –’ said Mr Weasley. He retreated a short distance from the cottage and beckoned Harry towards him. ‘Help me, Harry,’ he muttered, pulling a roll of Muggle money from his pocket and starting to peel the notes apart. ‘This one’s a – a – a ten? Ah yes, I see the little number on it now . so this is a five?’ ‘A twenty,’ Harry corrected him in an undertone, uncomfort¬ably aware of Mr Roberts trying to catch every word. ‘Ah yes, so it is . I don’t know, these little bits of paper …’ ‘You foreign?’ said Mr Roberts, as Mr Weasley returned with the correct notes. ‘Foreign?’ repeated Mr Weasley, puzzled. ‘You’re not the first one who’s had trouble with money,’ said Mr Roberts, scrutinising Mr Weasley closely. ‘I had two try and pay me with great gold coins the size of hubcaps ten minutes ago.’ ‘Did you really?’ said Mr Weasley nervously. Mr Roberts rummaged around in a tin for some change. ‘Never been this crowded,’ he said suddenly, looking out over the misty field again. ‘Hundreds of pre-bookings. People usually just turn up .’ ‘Is that right?’ said Mr Weasley, his hand held out for his change, but Mr Roberts didn’t give it to him. ‘Aye,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘People from all over. Loads of foreigners. And not just foreigners. Weirdos, you know? There’s a bloke walking round in a kilt and a poncho.’ ‘Shouldn’t he?’ said Mr Weasley anxiously. ‘It’s like some sort of . I dunno . like some sort of rally,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘They all seem to know each other. Like a big party.’ At that moment, a wizard in plus-fours appeared out of thin air next to Mr Roberts’s front door. ‘Obliviate!’ he said sharply, pointing his wand at Mr Roberts. Instantly, Mr Roberts’s eyes slid out of focus, his brows unknitted and a look of dreamy unconcern fell over his face. Harry recognised the symptoms of one who had just had his memory modified. ‘A map of the campsite for you,’ Mr Roberts said placidly to Mr Weasley. ‘And your change.’ ‘Thanks very much,’ said Mr Weasley. The wizard in plus-fours accompanied them towards the gate to the campsite. He looked exhausted; his chin was blue with stubble and there were deep purple shadows under his eyes. Once out of earshot of Mr Roberts, he muttered to Mr Weasley, ‘Been having a lot of trouble with him. Needs a Memory Charm ten times a day to keep him happy. And Ludo Bagman’s not helping. Trotting around talking about Bludgers and Quaffles at the top of his voice, not a worry about anti-Muggle security. Blimey, I’ll be glad when this is over. See you later, Arthur.’ He Disapparated. ‘I thought Mr Bagman was Head of Magical Games and Sports?’ said Ginny, looking surprised. ‘He should know better than to talk about Bludgers near Muggles, shouldn’t he?’ ‘He should,’ said Mr Weasley, smiling, and leading them through the gates into the campsite, ‘but Ludo’s always been a bit . well . lax about security. You couldn’t wish for a more enthusiastic Head of the Sports Department, though. He played Quidditch for England himself, you know. And he was the best Beater the Wimbourne Wasps ever had.’ They trudged up the misty field between long rows of tents. Most looked almost ordinary; their owners had clearly tried to make them as Muggle-like as possible, but had slipped up by adding chimneys, or bell-pulls, or weather-vanes. However, here and there was a tent so obviously magical that Harry could hardly be surprised that Mr Roberts was getting suspi¬cious. Halfway up the field stood an extravagant confection of striped silk like a miniature palace, with several live peacocks tethered at the entrance. A little further on they passed a tent that had three floors and several turrets; and a short way beyond that was a tent which had a front garden attached, complete with birdbath, sundial and fountain. ‘Always the same,’ said Mr Weasley, smiling, ‘we can’t resist showing off when we get together. Ah, here we are, look, this is us.’ They had reached the very edge of the wood at the top of the field, and here was an empty space, with a small sign hammered into the ground that read ‘Weezly’. ‘Couldn’t have a better spot!’ said Mr Weasley happily. ‘The pitch is just on the other side of the wood there, we’re as close as we could be.’ He hoisted his backpack from his shoulders. ‘Right,’ he said excitedly, ‘no magic allowed, strictly speaking, not when we’re out in these numbers on Muggle land. We’ll be putting these tents up by hand! Shouldn’t be too difficult . Muggles do it all the time . here, Harry, where do you reckon we should start?’ Harry had never been camping in his life; the Dursleys had never taken him on any kind of holiday, preferring to leave him with Mrs Figg, an old neighbour. However, he and Hermione worked out where most of the poles and pegs should go, and though Mr Weasley was more of a hindrance than a help, because he got thoroughly over-excited when it came to using the mallet, they finally managed to erect a pair of shabby two-man tents. All of them stood back to admire their handiwork. Nobody looking at these tents would guess they belonged to wizards, Harry thought, but the trouble was that once Bill, Charlie and Percy arrived, they would be a party of ten. Hermione seemed to have spotted this problem, too; she gave Harry a quizzical look as Mr Weasley dropped to his hands and knees and entered the first tent. ‘We’ll be a bit cramped,’ he called, ‘but I think we’ll all squeeze in. Come and have a look.’ Harry bent down, ducked under the tent flap, and felt his jaw drop. He had walked into what looked like an old-fashioned, three-roomed flat, complete with bathroom and kitchen. Oddly enough, it was furnished in exactly the same sort of style as Mrs Figg’s; there were crocheted covers on the mismatched chairs, and a strong smell of cats. ‘Well, it’s not for long,’ said Mr Weasley, mopping his bald patch with a handkerchief and peering in at the four bunk beds that stood in the bedroom. ‘I borrowed this from Perkins at the office. Doesn’t camp much any more, poor fellow, he’s got lumbago.’ He picked up the dusty kettle and peered inside it. ‘We’ll need water .’ ‘There’s a tap marked on this map the Muggle gave us,’ said Ron, who had followed Harry inside the tent, and seemed completely unimpressed by its extraordinary inner propor¬tions. ‘It’s on the other side of the field.’ ‘Well, why don’t you, Harry and Hermione go and get us some water, then –’ Mr Weasley handed over the kettle and a couple of saucepans, ‘– and the rest of us will get some wood for a fire.’ ‘But we’ve got an oven,’ said Ron, ‘why can’t we just –?’ ‘Ron, anti-Muggle security!’ said Mr Weasley, his face shining with anticipation. ‘When real Muggles camp, they cook on fires outdoors, I’ve seen them at it!’ After a quick tour of the girls’ tent, which was slightly small¬er than the boys’, though without the smell of cats, Harry, Ron and Hermione set off across the campsite with the kettle and saucepans. Now, with the sun newly risen and the mist lifting, they could see the city of tents that stretched in every direction. They made their way slowly through the rows, staring eagerly around. It was only just dawning on Harry how many witches and wizards there must be in the world; he had never really thought much about those in other countries. Their fellow campers were starting to wake up. First to stir were the families with small children; Harry had never seen witches and wizards this young before. A tiny boy no older than two was crouched outside a large pyramid-shaped tent, holding a wand and poking happily at a slug in the grass, which was swelling slowly to the size of a salami. As they drew level with him, his mother came hurrying out of the tent. ‘How many times, Kevin? You don’t – touch – Daddy’s – wand – yeuch!’ She had trodden on the giant slug, which burst. Her scold¬ing carried after them on the still air, mingling with the little boy’s yells – ‘You bust slug! You bust slug!’ A short way further on, they saw two little witches, barely older than Kevin, who were riding toy broomsticks which rose only high enough for the girls’ toes to skim the dewy grass. A Ministry wizard had already spotted them; as he hurried past Harry, Ron and Hermione, he muttered distractedly, ‘In broad daylight! Parents having a lie-in, I suppose –’ Here and there adult wizards and witches were emerging from their tents and starting to cook breakfast. Some, with furtive looks around them, conjured fires with their wands; others were striking matches with dubious looks on their faces, as though sure this couldn’t work. Three African wizards sat in serious conversation, all of them wearing long white robes and roasting what looked like a rabbit on a bright purple fire, while a group of middle-aged American witches sat gos¬siping happily beneath a spangled banner stretched between their tents which read: The Salem Witches’ Institute. Harry caught snatches of conversation in strange languages from the inside of tents they passed, and though he couldn’t understand a single word, the tone of every single voice was excited. ‘Er – is it my eyes, or has everything gone green?’ said Ron. It wasn’t just Ron’s eyes. They had walked into a patch of tents that were all covered with a thick growth of shamrocks, so that it looked as though small, oddly shaped hillocks had sprouted out of the earth. Grinning faces could be seen under those which had their flaps open. Then, from behind them, they heard their names. ‘Harry! Ron! Hermione!’ It was Seamus Finnigan, their fellow Gryffindor fourth-year. He was sitting in front of his own shamrock-covered tent, with a sandy-haired woman who had to be his mother, and his best friend, Dean Thomas, also of Gryffindor. ‘Like the decorations?’ said Seamus, grinning, when Harry, Ron and Hermione had gone over to say hello. ‘The Ministry’s not too happy.’ ‘Ah, why shouldn’t we show our colours?’ said Mrs Finnigan. ‘You should see what the Bulgarians have got dan¬gling all over their tents. You’ll be supporting Ireland, of course?’ she added, eyeing Harry, Ron and Hermione beadily. When they had assured her that they were indeed support¬ing Ireland, they set off again, though, as Ron said, ‘Like we’d say anything else surrounded by that lot.’ ‘I wonder what the Bulgarians have got dangling all over their tents?’ said Hermione. ‘Let’s go and have a look,’ said Harry, pointing to a large patch of tents upheld, where the Bulgarian flag, red, green and white, was fluttering in the breeze. The tents here had not been bedecked with plant life, but each and every one of them had the same poster attached to it, a poster of a very surly face with heavy black eyebrows. The picture was of course moving, but all it did was blink and scowl. ‘Krum,’ said Ron quietly. ‘What?’ said Hermione. ‘Krum!’ said Ron. ‘Viktor Krum, the Bulgarian Seeker!’ ‘He looks really grumpy,’ said Hermione, looking around at the many Krums blinking and scowling at them. ‘ “Really grumpy”?’ Ron raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘Who cares what he looks like? He’s unbelievable. He’s really young, too. Only just eighteen or something. He’s a genius, you wait until tonight, you’ll see.’ There was already a small queue for the tap in the corner of the field. Harry, Ron and Hermione joined it, right behind a pair of men who were having a heated argument. One of them was a very old wizard who was wearing a long flowery night¬gown. The other was clearly a Ministry wizard; he was holding out a pair of pinstriped trousers and almost crying with exasperation. ‘Just put them on, Archie, there’s a good chap, you can’t walk around like that, the Muggle on the gate’s already getting suspicious –’ ‘I bought this in a Muggle shop,’ said the old wizard stub¬bornly. ‘Muggles wear them.’ ‘Muggle women wear them, Archie, not the men, they wear these,’ said the Ministry wizard, and he brandished the pin¬striped trousers. ‘I’m not putting them on,’ said old Archie in indignation. ‘I like a healthy breeze round my privates, thanks.’ Hermione was overcome with such a strong fit of the giggles at this point that she had to duck out of the queue, and only returned when Archie had collected his water and moved away again. Walking more slowly now, because of the weight of the water, they made their way back through the campsite. Here and there they saw more familiar faces: other Hogwarts students with their families. Oliver Wood, the old captain of Harry’s house Quidditch team, who had just left Hogwarts, dragged Harry over to his parents’ tent to introduce him, and told him excitedly that he had just been signed to the Puddlemere United reserve team. Next they were hailed by Ernie Macmillan, a Hufflepuff fourth-year, and a little further on they saw Cho Chang, a very pretty girl who played Seeker on the Ravenclaw team. She waved and smiled at Harry, who slopped quite a lot of water down his front as he waved back. More to stop Ron smirking than anything, Harry hurriedly pointed out a large group of teenagers whom he had never seen before. ‘Who d’you reckon they are?’ he said. They don’t go to Hogwarts, do they?’ ‘ ’Spect they go to some foreign school,’ said Ron. ‘I know there are others, never met anyone who went to one though. Bill had a pen-friend at a school in Brazil . this was years and years ago . and he wanted to go on an exchange trip but Mum and Dad couldn’t afford it. His pen-friend got all offended when he said he wasn’t going and sent him a cursed hat. It made his ears shrivel up.’ Harry laughed, but didn’t voice the amazement he felt at hearing about other wizarding schools. He supposed, now he saw representatives of so many nationalities in the campsite, that he had been stupid never to realise that Hogwarts couldn’t be the only one. He glanced at Hermione, who looked utterly unsurprised by the information. No doubt she had run across the news about other wizarding schools in some book or other. ‘You’ve been ages,’ said George, when they finally got back to the Weasleys’ tents. ‘Met a few people,’ said Ron, setting the water down. ‘You not got that fire started yet?’ ‘Dad’s having fun with the matches,’ said Fred. Mr Weasley was having no success at all in lighting the fire, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Splintered matches littered the ground around him, but he looked as though he was having the time of his life. ‘Oops!’ he said, as he managed to light a match, and prompt¬ly dropped it in surprise. ‘Come here, Mr Weasley,’ said Hermione kindly, taking the box from him, and starting to show him how to do it properly. At last, they got the fire lit, though it was at least another hour before it was hot enough to cook anything. There was plenty to watch while they waited, however. Their tent seemed to be pitched right alongside a kind of thoroughfare to the pitch, and Ministry members kept hurrying up and down it, greeting Mr Weasley cordially as they passed. Mr Weasley kept up a running commentary, mainly for Harry and Hermione’s benefit; his own children knew too much about the Ministry to be greatly interested. ‘That was Cuthbert Mockridge, Head of the Goblin Liaison Office . here comes Gilbert Wimple, he’s with the Committee on Experimental Charms, he’s had those horns for a while now . Hello, Arnie . Arnold Peasegood, he’s an Obliviator – member of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, you know . and that’s Bode and Croaker . they’re Unspeakables …’ ‘They’re what?’ ‘From the Department of Mysteries, top-secret, no idea what they get up to .’ At last, the fire was ready, and they had just started cooking eggs and sausages when Bill, Charlie and Percy came strolling out of the woods towards them. ‘Just Apparated, Dad,’ said Percy loudly. ‘Ah, excellent, lunch!’ They were halfway through their plates of sausages and eggs when Mr Weasley jumped to his feet, waving and grinning at a man who was striding towards them. ‘Aha!’ he said. ‘The man of the moment! Ludo!’ Ludo Bagman was easily the most noticeable person Harry had seen so far, even including old Archie in his flowered nightdress. He was wearing long Quidditch robes in thick hori¬zontal strips of bright yellow and black. An enormous picture of a wasp was splashed across his chest. He had the look of a powerfully built man gone slightly to seed; the robes were stretched tightly across a large belly he surely had not had in the days when he had played Quidditch for England. His nose was squashed (probably broken by a stray Bludger, Harry thought), but his round blue eyes, short blond hair and rosy complexion made him look like a very overgrown schoolboy. ‘Ahoy there!’ Bagman called happily. He was walking as though he had springs attached to the balls of his feet, and was plainly in a state of wild excitement. ‘Arthur, old man,’ he puffed, as he reached the campfire, ‘what a day, eh? What a day! Could we have asked for more perfect weather? A cloudless night coming . and hardly a hiccough in the arrangements . not much for me to do!’ Behind him, a group of haggard-looking Ministry wizards rushed past, pointing at the distant evidence of some sort of a magical fire which was sending violet sparks twenty feet into the air. Percy hurried forwards with his hand outstretched. Apparently his disapproval of the way Ludo Bagman ran his department did not prevent him wanting to make a good impression. ‘Ah – yes,’ said Mr Weasley, grinning, ‘this is my son, Percy, he’s just started at the Ministry – and this is Fred – no, George, sorry – that’s Fred – Bill, Charlie, Ron – my daughter, Ginny – and Ron’s friends, Hermione Granger and Harry Potter.’ Bagman did the smallest of double-takes when he heard Harry’s name, and his eyes performed the familiar flick upwards to the scar on Harry’s forehead. ‘Everyone,’ Mr Weasley continued, ‘this is Ludo Bagman, you know who he is, it’s thanks to him we’ve got such good tickets –’ Bagman beamed and waved his hand as if to say it had been nothing. ‘Fancy a flutter on the match, Arthur?’ he said eagerly, jin¬gling what seemed to be a large amount of gold in the pockets of his yellow and black robes. ‘I’ve already got Roddy Pontner betting me Bulgaria will score first – I offered him nice odds, considering Ireland’s front three are the strongest I’ve seen in years – and little Agatha Timms has put up half shares in her eel farm on a week-long match.’ ‘Oh . go on, then,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Let’s see . a Galleon on Ireland to win?’ ‘A Galleon?’ Ludo Bagman looked slightly disappointed, but recovered himself. ‘Very well, very well . any other takers?’ ‘They’re a bit young to be gambling,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘Molly wouldn’t like –’ ‘We’ll bet thirty-seven Galleons, fifteen Sickles, three Knuts,’ said Fred, as he and George quickly pooled all their money, ‘that Ireland win – but Viktor Krum gets the Snitch. Oh, and we’ll throw in a fake wand.’ ‘You don’t want to go showing Mr Bagman rubbish like that –’ Percy hissed, but Bagman didn’t seem to think the wand was rubbish at all; on the contrary, his boyish face shone with excitement as he took it from Fred, and when the wand gave a loud squawk and turned into a rubber chicken, Bagman roared with laughter. ‘Excellent! I haven’t seen one that convincing in years! I’d pay five Galleons for that!’ Percy froze in an attitude of stunned disapproval. ‘Boys,’ said Mr Weasley under his breath, ‘I don’t want you betting . that’s all your savings . your mother –’ ‘Don’t be a spoilsport, Arthur!’ boomed Ludo Bagman, rattling his pockets excitedly. ‘They’re old enough to know what they want! You reckon Ireland will win but Krum’ll get the Snitch? Not a chance, boys, not a chance . I’ll give you excellent odds on that one . we’ll add five Galleons for the funny wand, then, shall we .’ Mr Weasley looked on helplessly as Ludo Bagman whipped out a notebook and quill and began jotting down the twins’ names. ‘Cheers,’ said George, taking the slip of parchment Bagman handed him and tucking it away carefully. Bagman turned most cheerfully back to Mr Weasley. ‘Couldn’t do me a brew, I suppose? I’m keeping an eye out for Barty Crouch. My Bulgarian opposite number’s making difficulties, and I can’t understand a word he’s saying. Barty’ll be able to sort it out. He speaks about a hundred and fifty languages.’ ‘Mr Crouch?’ said Percy, suddenly abandoning his look of poker-stiff disapproval and positively writhing with excite¬ment. ‘He speaks over two hundred! Mermish and Gobbledegook and Troll .’ ‘Anyone can speak Troll,’ said Fred dismissively, ‘all you have to do is point and grunt.’ Percy threw Fred an extremely nasty look, and stoked the fire vigorously to bring the kettle back to the boil. ‘Any news of Bertha Jorkins yet, Ludo?’ Mr Weasley asked, as Bagman settled himself down on the grass beside them all. ‘Not a dicky bird,’ said Bagman comfortably. ‘But she’ll turn up. Poor old Bertha . memory like a leaky cauldron and no sense of direction. Lost, you take my word for it. She’ll wander back into the office some time in October, thinking it’s still July.’ ‘You don’t think it might be time to send someone to look for her?’ Mr Weasley suggested tentatively, as Percy handed Bagman his tea. ‘Barty Crouch keeps saying that,’ said Bagman, his round eyes widening innocently, ‘but we really can’t spare anyone at the moment. Oh – talk of the devil! Barty!’ A wizard had just Apparated at their fireside, and he could not have made more of a contrast with Ludo Bagman, sprawled on the grass in his old Wasp robes. Barty Crouch was a stiff, upright, elderly man, dressed in an impeccably crisp suit and tie. The parting in his short grey hair was almost unnaturally straight and his narrow toothbrush moustache looked as though he trimmed it using a slide-rule. His shoes were very highly polished. Harry could see at once why Percy idolised him. Percy was a great believer in rigidly following rules, and Mr Crouch had complied with the rule about Muggle dressing so thoroughly that he could have passed as a bank manager; Harry doubted even Uncle Vernon would have spotted him for what he really was. ‘Pull up a bit of grass, Barty,’ said Ludo brightly, patting the ground beside him. ‘No, thank you, Ludo,’ said Crouch, and there was a bite of impatience in his voice. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. The Bulgarians are insisting we add another twelve seats to the Top Box.’ ‘Oh, is that what they’re after?’ said Bagman. ‘I thought the chap was asking to borrow a pair of tweezers. Bit of a strong accent.’ ‘Mr Crouch!’ said Percy breathlessly, sunk into a kind of half bow which made him look like a hunchback. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ ‘Oh,’ said Mr Crouch, looking over at Percy in mild surprise. ‘Yes – thank you, Weatherby.’ Fred and George choked into their own cups. Percy, very pink around the ears, busied himself with the kettle. ‘Oh, and I’ve been wanting a word with you, too, Arthur,’ said Mr Crouch, his sharp eyes falling upon Mr Weasley. ‘Ali Bashir’s on the warpath. He wants a word with you about your embargo on flying carpets.’ Mr Weasley heaved a deep sigh. ‘I sent him an owl about that just last week. If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a hun¬dred times: carpets are defined as a Muggle Artefact by the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects, but will he listen?’ ‘I doubt it,’ said Mr Crouch, accepting a cup from Percy. ‘He’s desperate to export here.’ ‘Well, they’ll never replace brooms in Britain, will they?’ said Bagman. ‘Ali thinks there’s a niche in the market for a family vehicle,’ said Mr Crouch. ‘I remember my grandfather had an Axminster that could seat twelve – but that was before carpets were banned, of course.’ He spoke as though he wanted to leave nobody in any doubt that all his ancestors had abided strictly by the law. ‘So, been keeping busy, Barty?’ said Bagman breezily. ‘Fairly,’ said Mr Crouch drily. ‘Organising Portkeys across five continents is no mean feat, Ludo.’ ‘I expect you’ll both be glad when this is over?’ said Mr Weasley. Ludo Bagman looked shocked. ‘Glad! Don’t know when I’ve had more fun . still, it’s not as though we haven’t got anything to look forward to, eh, Barty? Eh? Plenty left to organise, eh?’ Mr Crouch raised his eyebrows at Bagman. ‘We agreed not to make the announcement until all the details –’ ‘Oh, details!’ said Bagman, waving the word away like a cloud of midges. ‘They’ve signed, haven’t they? They’ve agreed, haven’t they? I bet you anything these kids’ll know soon enough anyway. I mean, it’s happening at Hogwarts –’ ‘Ludo, we need to meet the Bulgarians, you know,’ said Mr Crouch sharply, cutting Bagman’s remarks short. ‘Thank you for the tea, Weatherby.’ He pushed his undrunk tea back at Percy and waited for Ludo to rise; Bagman struggled to his feet again, swigging down the last of his tea, the gold in his pockets chinking merrily. ‘See you all later!’ he said. ‘You’ll be up in the Top Box with me – I’m commentating!’ He waved, Barty Crouch nodded curtly, and both of them Disapparated. ‘What’s happening at Hogwarts, Dad?’ said Fred at once. ‘What were they talking about?’ ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ said Mr Weasley, smiling. ‘It’s classified information, until such time as the Ministry decides to release it,’ said Percy stiffly. ‘Mr Crouch was quite right not to disclose it.’ ‘Oh, shut up, Weatherby.’ said Fred. A sense of excitement rose like a palpable cloud over the campsite as the afternoon wore on. By dusk, the still summer air itself seemed to be quivering with anticipation, and as dark¬ness spread like a curtain over the thousands of waiting wiz¬ards, the last vestiges of pretence disappeared: the Ministry seemed to have bowed to the inevitable, and stopped fighting the signs of blatant magic now breaking out everywhere. Salesmen were Apparating every few feet, carrying trays and pushing carts full of extraordinary merchandise. There were luminous rosettes – green for Ireland, red for Bulgaria – which were squealing the names of the players, pointed green hats bedecked with dancing shamrocks, Bulgarian scarves adorned with lions that really roared, flags from both countries which played their national anthems as they were waved; there were tiny models of Firebolts, which really flew, and collectible figures of famous players, which strolled across the palm of your hand, preening themselves. ‘Been saving my pocket money all summer for this,’ Ron told Harry, as they and Hermione strolled through the salesmen, buying souvenirs. Though Ron purchased himself a dancing-shamrock hat and a large green rosette, he also bought a small figure of Viktor Krum, the Bulgarian Seeker. The miniature Krum walked backwards and forwards over Ron’s hand, scowling up at the green rosette above him. ‘Wow, look at these!’ said Harry, hurrying over to a cart piled high with what looked like brass binoculars, except that they were covered in all sorts of weird knobs and dials. ‘Omnioculars,’ said the saleswizard eagerly. ‘You can replay action . slow everything down . and they flash up a play-by-play breakdown if you need it. Bargain – ten Galleons each.’ ‘Wish I hadn’t bought this now,’ said Ron, gesturing at his dancing shamrock hat and gazing longingly at the Omnioculars. ‘Three pairs,’ said Harry firmly to the wizard. ‘No – don’t bother,’ said Ron, going red. He was always touchy about the fact that Harry, who had inherited a small fortune from his parents, had much more money than he did. ‘You won’t be getting anything for Christmas,’ Harry told him, thrusting Omnioculars into his and Hermione’s hands. ‘For about ten years, mind.’ ‘Fair enough,’ said Ron, grinning. ‘Oooh, thanks, Harry,’ said Hermione. ‘And I’ll get us some programmes, look –’ Their money bags considerably lighter, they went back to the tents. Bill, Charlie and Ginny were all sporting green rosettes too, and Mr Weasley was carrying an Irish flag. Fred and George had no souvenirs as they had given Bagman all their gold. And then a deep, booming gong sounded somewhere beyond the woods, and, at once, green and red lanterns blazed into life in the trees, lighting a path to the pitch. ‘It’s time!’ said Mr Weasley, looking as excited as any of them. ‘Come on, let’s go!’ ? — CHAPTER EIGHT — The Quidditch World Cup Clutching their purchases, Mr Weasley in the lead, they all hurried into the wood, following the lantern-lit trail. They could hear the sounds of thousands of people moving around them, shouts and laughter, snatches of singing. The atmos¬phere of feverish excitement was highly infectious; Harry couldn’t stop grinning. They walked through the wood for twenty minutes, talking and joking loudly, until at last they emerged on the other side, and found themselves in the shad¬ow of a gigantic stadium. Though Harry could see only a frac¬tion of the immense gold walls surrounding the pitch, he could tell that ten cathedrals would fit comfortably inside it. ‘Seats a hundred thousand,’ said Mr Weasley, spotting the awestruck look on Harry’s face. ‘Ministry task force of five hundred have been working on it all year. Muggle-Repelling Charms on every inch of it. Every time Muggles have got any¬where near here all year, they’ve suddenly remembered urgent appointments and had to dash away again . Bless them,’ he added fondly, leading the way towards the nearest entrance, which was already surrounded by a swarm of shouting witches and wizards. ‘Prime seats!’ said the Ministry witch at the entrance, when she checked their tickets. ‘Top Box! Straight upstairs, Arthur, and as high as you can go.’ The stairs into the stadium were carpeted in rich purple. They clambered upwards with the rest of the crowd, which slowly filtered away through doors into the stands to their left and right. Mr Weasley’s party kept climbing, and at last they reached the top of the staircase, and found themselves in a small box, set at the highest point of the stadium and situated exactly halfway between the golden goalposts. About twenty purple-and-gilt chairs stood in two rows here, and Harry, filing into the front seats with the Weasleys, looked down upon a scene the like of which he could never have imagined. A hundred thousand witches and wizards were taking their places in the seats which rose in levels around the long oval pitch. Everything was suffused with a mysterious golden light that seemed to come from the stadium itself. The pitch looked smooth as velvet from their lofty position. At either end of the pitch stood three goal hoops, fifty feet high; right opposite them, almost at Harry’s eye level, was a gigantic blackboard. Gold writ¬ing kept dashing across it as though an invisible giant’s hand was scrawling upon it and then wiping it off again; watching it, Harry saw that it was flashing advertisements across the pitch. The Bluebottle: A Broom for All the Family – safe, reliable and with In-built Anti-Burglar Buzzer . Mrs Shower’s All-Purpose Magical Mess-Remover: No Pain, No Stain!. Gladrags Wizardwear – London, Paris, Hogsmeade . Harry tore his eyes away from the sign and looked over his shoulder to see who else was sharing the box with them. So far it was empty, except for a tiny creature sitting in the second from last seat at the end of the row behind them. The creature, whose legs were so short they stuck out in front of it on the chair, was wearing a tea-towel draped like a toga, and it had its face hidden in its hands. Yet those long, bat-like ears were oddly familiar . ‘Dobby?’ said Harry incredulously. The tiny creature looked up and parted its fingers, revealing enormous brown eyes and a nose the exact size and shape of a large tomato. It wasn’t Dobby – it was, however, unmistakeably a house-elf, as Harry’s friend Dobby had been. Harry had set Dobby free from his old owners, the Malfoy family. ‘Did sir just call me Dobby?’ squeaked the elf curiously, from between its fingers. Its voice was higher even than Dobby’s had been, a teeny, quivering squeak of a voice, and Harry suspected – though it was very hard to tell with a house-elf – that this one might just be female. Ron and Hermione spun around in their seats to look. Though they had heard a lot about Dobby from Harry, they had never actually met him. Even Mr Weasley looked around in interest. ‘Sorry,’ Harry told the elf, ‘I just thought you were someone I knew.’ ‘But I knows Dobby too, sir!’ squeaked the elf. She was shielding her face, as though blinded by light, though the Top Box was not brightly lit. ‘My name is Winky, sir – and you, sir –’ her dark brown eyes widened to the size of side plates as they rested upon Harry’s scar, ‘you is surely Harry Potter!’ ‘Yeah, I am,’ said Harry. ‘But Dobby talks of you all the time, sir!’ she said, lowering her hands very slightly and looking awestruck. ‘How is he?’ said Harry. ‘How’s freedom suiting him?’ ‘Ah, sir,’ said Winky, shaking her head, ‘ah, sir, meaning no disrespect, sir, but I is not sure you did Dobby a favour, sir, when you is setting him free.’ ‘Why?’ said Harry, taken aback. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ ‘Freedom is going to Dobby’s head, sir,’ said Winky sadly. ‘Ideas above his station, sir. Can’t get another position, sir.’ ‘Why not?’ said Harry. Winky lowered her voice by a half octave and whispered, ‘He is wanting paying for his work, sir.’ ‘Paying?’ said Harry blankly. ‘Well – why shouldn’t he be paid?’ Winky looked quite horrified at the idea, and closed her fingers slightly so that her face was half-hidden again. ‘House-elves is not paid, sir!’ she said in a muffled squeak. ‘No, no, no. I says to Dobby, I says, go find yourself a nice family and settle down, Dobby. He is getting up to all sorts of high jinks, sir, what is unbecoming to a house-elf. You goes racketing around like this, Dobby, I says, and next thing I hear you’s up in front of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, like some common goblin.’ ‘Well, it’s about time he had a bit of fun,’ said Harry. ‘House-elves is not supposed to have fun, Harry Potter,’ said Winky firmly, from behind her hands. ‘House-elves does what they is told. I is not liking heights at all, Harry Potter –’ she glanced towards the edge of the box and gulped, ‘– but my master sends me to the Top Box and I comes, sir.’ ‘Why’s he sent you up here, if he knows you don’t like heights?’ said Harry, frowning. ‘Master – master wants me to save him a seat, Harry Potter, he is very busy,’ said Winky, tilting her head towards the empty space beside her. ‘Winky is wishing she is back in master’s tent, Harry Potter, but Winky does what she is told, Winky is a good house-elf.’ She gave the edge of the box another frightened look, and hid her eyes completely again. Harry turned back to the others. ‘So that’s a house-elf?’ Ron muttered. ‘Weird things, aren’t they?’ ‘Dobby was weirder,’ said Harry, fervently. Ron pulled out his Omnioculars and started testing them, staring down into the crowd on the other side of the stadium. ‘Wild!’ he said, twiddling the replay knob on the side. ‘I can make that old bloke down there pick his nose again . and again . and again …’ Hermione, meanwhile, was skimming eagerly through her velvet-covered, tasselled programme. ‘ “A display from the team mascots will precede the match”,’ she read aloud. ‘Oh, that’s always worth watching,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘National teams bring creatures from their native land, you know, to put on a bit of a show.’ The box filled gradually around them over the next half hour. Mr Weasley kept shaking hands with people who were obviously very important wizards. Percy jumped to his feet so often that he looked as though he was trying to sit on a hedge¬hog. When Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic himself, arrived, Percy bowed so low that his glasses fell off and shat¬tered. Highly embarrassed, he repaired them with his wand, and thereafter remained in his seat, throwing jealous looks at Harry, whom Cornelius Fudge had greeted like an old friend. They had met before, and Fudge shook Harry’s hand in fatherly fashion, asked how he was, and introduced him to the wizards on either side of him. ‘Harry Potter, you know,’ he loudly told the Bulgarian Minister, who was wearing splendid robes of black velvet trimmed with gold, and didn’t seem to understand a word of English. ‘Harry Potter . oh, come on now, you know who he is . the boy who survived You-Know-Who . you do know who he is –’ The Bulgarian wizard suddenly spotted Harry’s scar and started gabbling loudly and excitedly, pointing at it. ‘Knew we’d get there in the end,’ said Fudge wearily to Harry. ‘I’m no great shakes at languages, I need Barty Crouch for this sort of thing. Ah, I see his house-elf’s saving him a seat . good job too, these Bulgarian blighters have been trying to cadge all the best places . ah, and here’s Lucius!’ Harry, Ron and Hermione turned quickly. Edging along the second row to three still-empty seats right behind Mr Weasley were none other than Dobby the house-elf’s old owners – Lucius Malfoy, his son, Draco, and a woman Harry supposed must be Draco’s mother. Harry and Draco Malfoy had been enemies ever since their very first journey to Hogwarts. A pale boy with a pointed face and white-blond hair, Draco greatly resembled his father. His mother was blonde, too; tall and slim, she would have been nice looking if she hadn’t been wearing a look that suggested there was a nasty smell under her nose. ‘Ah, Fudge,’ said Mr Malfoy, holding out his hand as he reached the Minister for Magic. ‘How are you? I don’t think you’ve met my wife, Narcissa? Or our son, Draco?’ ‘How do you do, how do you do?’ said Fudge, smiling and bowing to Mrs Malfoy. ‘And allow me to introduce you to Mr Oblansk – Obalonsk – Mr – well, he’s the Bulgarian Minister for Magic, and he can’t understand a word I’m saying anyway, so never mind. And let’s see who else – you know Arthur Weasley, I daresay?’ It was a tense moment. Mr Weasley and Mr Malfoy looked at each other and Harry vividly recalled the last time that they had come face to face; it had been in Flourish and Blotts book¬shop, and they had had a fight. Mr Malfoy’s cold grey eyes swept over Mr Weasley, and then up and down the row. ‘Good Lord, Arthur,’ he said softly. ‘What did you have to sell to get seats in the Top Box? Surely your house wouldn’t have fetched this much?’ Fudge, who wasn’t listening, said, ‘Lucius has just given a very generous contribution to St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, Arthur. He’s here as my guest.’ ‘How – how nice,’ said Mr Weasley, with a very strained smile. Mr Malfoy’s eyes had returned to Hermione, who went slightly pink, but stared determinedly back at him. Harry knew exactly what was making Mr Malfoy’s lip curl. The Malfoys prided themselves on being pure-bloods; in other words, they considered anyone of Muggle descent, like Hermione, second-class. However, under the gaze of the Minister for Magic, Mr Malfoy didn’t dare say anything. He nodded sneeringly to Mr Weasley, and continued down the line to his seats. Draco shot Harry, Ron and Hermione one con¬temptuous look, then settled himself between his mother and father. ‘Slimy gits,’ Ron muttered, as he, Harry and Hermione turned to face the pitch again. Next moment, Ludo Bagman had charged into the box. ‘Everyone ready?’ he said, his round face gleaming like a great, excited Edam. ‘Minister – ready to go?’ ‘Ready when you are, Ludo,’ said Fudge comfortably. Ludo whipped out his wand, directed it at his own throat and said ‘Sonorus!’ and then spoke over the roar of sound that was now filling the packed stadium; his voice echoed over them, booming into every corner of the stands: ‘Ladies and gentlemen . welcome! Welcome to the final of the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!’ The spectators screamed and clapped. Thousands of flags waved, adding their discordant national anthems to the racket. The huge blackboard opposite them was wiped clear of its last message (Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans – a Risk with Every Mouthful!) and now showed BULGARIA: ZERO, IRELAND: ZERO. ‘And now, without further ado, allow me to introduce . the Bulgarian Team Mascots!’ The right-hand side of the stands, which was a solid block of scarlet, roared its approval. ‘I wonder what they’ve brought?’ said Mr Weasley, leaning forwards in his seat. Aaah!’ He suddenly whipped off his glasses and polished them hurriedly on his robes. ‘Veela!’ ‘What are Veel—?’ But a hundred Veela were now gliding out onto the pitch, and Harry’s question was answered for him. Veela were women . the most beautiful women Harry had ever seen . except that they weren’t – they couldn’t be – human. This puzzled Harry for a moment, while he tried to guess what exactly they could be; what could make their skin shine moon-bright like that, or their white-gold hair fan out behind them without wind . but then the music started, and Harry stopped worrying about them not being human – in fact, he stopped worrying about anything at all. The Veela had started to dance, and Harry’s mind had gone completely and blissfully blank. All that mattered in the world was that he kept watching the Veela, because if they stopped dancing, terrible things would happen . And as the Veela danced faster and faster, wild, half-formed thoughts started chasing through Harry’s dazed mind. He wanted to do something very impressive, right now. Jumping from the box into the stadium seemed a good idea . but would it be good enough? ‘Harry, what are you doing?’ said Hermione’s voice from a long way off. The music stopped. Harry blinked. He was standing up, and one of his legs was resting on the wall of the box. Next to him, Ron was frozen in an attitude that looked as though he was about to dive from a springboard. Angry yells were filling the stadium. The crowd didn’t want the Veela to go. Harry was with them; he would, of course, be supporting Bulgaria, and he wondered vaguely why he had a large green shamrock pinned to his chest. Ron, meanwhile, was absent-mindedly shredding the shamrocks on his hat. Mr Weasley, smiling slightly, leant over to Ron and tugged the hat out of his hands. ‘You’ll be wanting that,’ he said, ‘once Ireland have had their say.’ ‘Huh?’ said Ron, staring open-mouthed at the Veela, who had now lined up along one side of the pitch. Hermione made a loud tutting noise. She reached up and pulled Harry back into his seat. ‘Honestly!’ she said. ‘And now,’ roared Ludo Bagman’s voice, ‘kindly put your wands in the air . for the Irish National Team Mascots!’ Next moment, what seemed to be a great green-and-gold comet had come zooming into the stadium. It did one circuit of the stadium, then split into two smaller comets, each hurtling towards the goalposts. A rainbow arced suddenly across the pitch, connecting the two balls of light. The crowd ‘oooohed’ and ‘aaaaahed’, as though at a firework display. Now the rainbow faded and the balls of light reunited and merged; they had formed a great shimmering shamrock, which rose up into the sky and began to soar over the stands. Something like golden rain seemed to be falling from it – ‘Excellent!’ yelled Ron, as the shamrock soared over their heads, and heavy gold coins rained from it, bouncing off their heads and seats. Squinting up at the shamrock, Harry realised that it was actually composed of thousands of tiny little bearded men with red waistcoats, each carrying a minute lamp of gold or green. ‘Leprechauns!’ said Mr Weasley, over the tumultuous applause of the crowd, many of whom were still fighting and rummaging around under their chairs to retrieve the gold. ‘There you go,’ Ron yelled happily, stuffing a fistful of gold coins into Harry’s hand. ‘For the Omnioculars! Now you’ve got to buy me a Christmas present, ha!’ The great shamrock dissolved, the leprechauns drifted down onto the pitch on the opposite side from the Veela, and settled themselves cross-legged to watch the match. ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, kindly welcome – the Bulgarian National Quidditch Team! I give you – Dimitrov!’ A scarlet-clad figure on a broomstick, moving so fast it was blurred, shot out onto the pitch from an entrance far below, to wild applause from the Bulgarian supporters. ‘Ivanova!’ A second scarlet-robed player zoomed out. ‘Zograf! Levski! Vulchanov! Volkov! Aaaaaaand – Krum!’ ‘That’s him, that’s him!’ yelled Ron, following Krum with his Omnioculars; Harry quickly focused his own. Viktor Krum was thin, dark and sallow-skinned, with a large curved nose and thick black eyebrows. He looked like an over-grown bird of prey. It was hard to believe he was only eighteen. ‘And now, please greet – the Irish National Quidditch Team!’ yelled Bagman. ‘Presenting – Connolly! Ryan! Troy! Mullet! Moran! Quigley! Aaaaaand – Lynch!’ Seven green blurs swept onto the pitch; Harry spun a small dial on the side of his Omnioculars, and slowed the players down enough to read the word ‘Firebolt’ on each of their brooms, and see their names, embroidered in silver, upon their backs. ‘And here, all the way from Egypt, our referee, acclaimed Chairwizard of the International Association of Quidditch, Hassan Mostafa!’ A small and skinny wizard, completely bald but with a moustache to rival Uncle Vernon’s, wearing robes of pure gold to match the stadium, strode out onto the pitch. A silver whistle was protruding from under the moustache, and he was carrying a large wooden crate under one arm, his broomstick under the other. Harry spun the speed dial on his Omnioculars back to normal, watching closely as Mostafa mounted his broomstick and kicked the crate open – four balls burst into the air: the scarlet Quaffle, the two black Bludgers and (Harry saw it for the briefest moment, before it sped out of sight) the minuscule, winged, Golden Snitch. With a sharp blast on his whistle, Mostafa shot into the air after the balls. ‘Theeeeeeeey’re OFF!’ screamed Bagman. ‘And it’s Mullet! Troy! Moran! Dimitrov! Back to Mullet! Troy! Levski! Moran!’ It was Quidditch as Harry had never seen it played before. He was pressing his Omnioculars so hard to his eyes that his glasses were cutting into the bridge of his nose. The speed of the players was incredible – the Chasers were throwing the Quaffle to each other so fast that Bagman only had time to say their names. Harry spun the ‘slow’ dial on the right of his Omnioculars again, pressed the ‘play by play’ button on the top and he was immediately watching in slow motion, while glittering purple lettering flashed across the lenses, and the noise of the crowd pounded against his eardrums. ‘Hawkshead Attacking Formation’ he read, as he watched the three Irish Chasers zoom closely together, Troy in the centre, slightly ahead of Mullet and Moran, bearing down upon the Bulgarians. ‘Porskoff Ploy’ flashed up next, as Troy made as though to dart upwards with the Quaffle, drawing away the Bulgarian Chaser Ivanova, and dropping the Quaffle to Moran. One of the Bulgarian Beaters, Volkov, swung hard at a passing Bludger with his small club, knocking it into Moran’s path; Moran ducked to avoid the Bludger and dropped the Quaffle; and Levski, soaring beneath, caught it – ‘TROY SCORES!’ roared Bagman, and the stadium shud¬dered with a roar of applause and cheers. ‘Ten–zero to Ireland!’ ‘What?’ Harry yelled, looking wildly around through his Omnioculars. ‘But Levski’s got the Quaffle!’ ‘Harry, if you’re not going to watch at normal speed, you’re going to miss things!’ shouted Hermione, who was dancing up and down, waving her arms in the air while Troy did a lap of honour of the pitch. Harry looked quickly over the top of his Omnioculars, and saw that the leprechauns watching from the side-lines had all risen into the air again, and formed the great, glittering shamrock. Across the pitch, the Veela were watching them sulkily. Furious with himself, Harry spun his speed dial back to normal as play resumed. Harry knew enough about Quidditch to see that the Irish Chasers were superb. They worked as a seamless team, appearing to read each other’s minds by the way they posi¬tioned themselves, and the rosette on Harry’s chest kept squeaking their names: ‘Troy – Mullet – Moran!’ And within ten minutes, Ireland had scored twice more, bringing their lead to thirty–zero, and causing a thunderous tide of roars and applause from the green-clad supporters. The match became still faster, but more brutal. Volkov and Vulchanov, the Bulgarian Beaters, were whacking the Bludgers as fiercely as possible at the Irish Chasers, and were starting to prevent them using some of their best moves; twice they were forced to scatter, and then, finally, Ivanova managed to break through their ranks, dodge the Keeper, Ryan, and score Bulgaria’s first goal. ‘Fingers in your ears!’ bellowed Mr Weasley, as the Veela started to dance in celebration. Harry screwed up his eyes, too; he wanted to keep his mind on the game. After a few seconds, he chanced a glance at the pitch. The Veela had stopped danc¬ing, and Bulgaria were again in possession of the Quaffle. ‘Dimitrov! Levski! Dimitrov! Ivanova – oh, I say!’ roared Bagman. One hundred thousand wizards and witches gasped as the two Seekers, Krum and Lynch, plummeted through the centre of the Chasers, so fast that it looked as though they had just jumped from aeroplanes without parachutes. Harry followed their descent through his Omnioculars, squinting to see where the Snitch was – ‘They’re going to crash!’ screamed Hermione next to Harry. She was half-right – at the very last second, Viktor Krum pulled out of the dive and spiralled off. Lynch, however, hit the ground with a dull thud that could be heard throughout the stadium. A huge groan rose from the Irish seats. ‘Fool!’ moaned Mr Weasley. ‘Krum was feinting!’ ‘It’s time out!’ yelled Bagman’s voice. ‘As trained medi¬wizards hurry onto the pitch to examine Aidan Lynch!’ ‘He’ll be OK, he only got ploughed!’ Charlie said reassuring¬ly to Ginny, who was hanging over the side of the box, looking horror-struck. ‘Which is what Krum was after, of course …’ Harry hastily pressed the ‘replay’ and ‘play by play’ buttons on his Omnioculars, twiddled the speed dial, and put them back up to his eyes. He watched as Krum and Lynch dived again in slow motion. ‘Wronski Feint – dangerous Seeker diversion’ read the shining purple lettering across his lenses. He saw Krum’s face contort¬ed with concentration as he pulled out of the dive just in time, while Lynch was flattened, and he understood – Krum hadn’t seen the Snitch at all, he was just making Lynch copy him. Harry had never seen anyone fly like that; Krum hardly looked as though he was using a broomstick at all; he moved so easily through the air that it looked as though he was unsupported and weightless. Harry turned his Omnioculars back to normal, and focused them on Krum. He was circling high above Lynch, who was now being revived by mediwizards with cups of potion. Harry, focusing still more closely upon Krum’s face, saw his dark eyes darting all over the ground a hundred feet below. He was using the time while Lynch was revived to look for the Snitch without interference. Lynch got to his feet at last, to loud cheers from the green-clad supporters, mounted his Firebolt and kicked back off into the air. His revival seemed to give Ireland new heart. When Mostafa blew his whistle again, the Chasers moved into action with a skill unrivalled by anything Harry had seen so far. After fifteen more fast and furious minutes, Ireland had pulled ahead by ten more goals. They were now leading by one hundred and thirty points to ten, and the game was starting to get dirtier. As Mullet shot towards the goalposts yet again, clutching the Quaffle tightly under her arm, the Bulgarian Keeper, Zograf, flew out to meet her. Whatever happened was over so quickly Harry didn’t catch it, but a scream of rage from the Irish crowd, and Mostafa’s long, shrill whistle blast, told him it had been a foul. ‘And Mostafa takes the Bulgarian Keeper to task for cobbing – excessive use of elbows!’ Bagman informed the roaring spec¬tators. ‘And – yes, it’s a penalty to Ireland!’ The leprechauns, who had risen angrily into the air like a swarm of glittering hornets when Mullet had been fouled, now darted together to form the words ‘HA HA HA!’. The Veela on the other side of the pitch leapt to their feet, tossed their hair angrily and started to dance again. As one, the Weasley boys and Harry stuffed their fingers in their ears, but Hermione, who hadn’t bothered, was soon tugging on Harry’s arm. He turned to look at her, and she pulled his fingers impatiently out of his ears. ‘Look at the referee!’ she said, giggling. Harry looked down at the pitch. Hassan Mostafa had landed right in front of the dancing Veela, and was acting very oddly indeed. He was flexing his muscles and smoothing his mous¬tache excitedly. ‘Now, we can’t have that!’ said Ludo Bagman, though he sounded highly amused. ‘Somebody slap the referee!’ A mediwizard came tearing across the pitch, his fingers stuffed in his own ears, and kicked Mostafa hard on the shins. Mostafa seemed to come to himself; Harry, watching through the Omnioculars again, saw that he looked exceptionally embarrassed, and was shouting at the Veela, who had stopped dancing and were looking mutinous. ‘And unless I’m much mistaken, Mostafa is actually attempt¬ing to send off the Bulgarian Team Mascots!’ said Bagman’s voice. ‘Now there’s something we haven’t seen before . oh, this could turn nasty .’ It did: the Bulgarian Beaters, Volkov and Vulchanov, had landed either side of Mostafa, and began arguing furiously with him, gesticulating towards the leprechauns, who had now glee¬fully formed the words ‘HEE HEE HEE’. Mostafa was not impressed by the Bulgarians’ arguments, however; he was jab¬bing his finger into the air, clearly telling them to get flying again, and when they refused, he gave two short blasts on his whistle. ‘Two penalties for Ireland!’ shouted Bagman, and the Bulgarian crowd howled with anger. ‘And Volkov and Vulchanov had better get back on those brooms . yes . there they go . and Troy takes the Quaffle …’ Play now reached a level of ferocity beyond anything they had yet seen. The Beaters on both sides were acting without mercy: Volkov and Vulchanov in particular seemed not to care whether their clubs made contact with Bludger or human, as they swung them violently through the air. Dimitrov shot straight at Moran, who had the Quaffle, nearly knocking her off her broom. ‘Foul!’ roared the Irish supporters as one, all standing up in a great wave of green. ‘Foul!’ echoed Ludo Bagman’s magically magnified voice. ‘Dimitrov skins Moran – deliberately flying to collide there – and it’s got to be another penalty – yes, there’s the whistle!’ The leprechauns had risen into the air again and, this time, they formed a giant hand, which was making a very rude sign indeed across the pitch towards the Veela. At this, the Veela lost control. They launched themselves across the pitch, and began throwing what seemed to be handfuls of fire at the leprechauns. Watching through his Omnioculars, Harry saw that they didn’t look remotely beautiful now. On the contrary, their faces were elongating into sharp, cruel-beaked bird heads, and long, scaly wings were bursting from their shoulders – ‘And that, boys,’ yelled Mr Weasley over the tumult of the crowd below, ‘is why you should never go for looks alone!’ Ministry wizards were flooding onto the field to separate the Veela and the leprechauns, but with little success; meanwhile, the pitched battle below was nothing to the one above. Harry turned this way and that, staring through his Omnioculars, as the Quaffle changed hands with the speed of a bullet – ‘Levski – Dimitrov – Moran – Troy – Mullet – Ivanova – Moran again – Moran – MORAN SCORES!’ But the cheers of the Irish supporters were barely heard over the shrieks of the Veela, the blasts now issuing from the Ministry members’ wands, and the furious roars of the Bulgarians. The game recommenced immediately; now Levski had the Quaffle, now Dimitrov – The Irish Beater Quigley swung heavily at a passing Bludger, and hit it as hard as possible towards Krum, who did not duck quickly enough. It hit him hard in the face. There was a deafening groan from the crowd; Krum’s nose looked broken, there was blood everywhere, but Hassan Mostafa didn’t blow his whistle. He had become distracted, and Harry couldn’t blame him; one of the Veela had thrown a handful of fire and set his broomtail alight. Harry wanted someone to realise that Krum was injured; even though he was supporting Ireland, Krum was the most exciting player on the pitch. Ron obviously felt the same. ‘Time out! Ah, come on, he can’t play like that, look at him –’ ‘Look at Lynch!’ Harry yelled. For the Irish Seeker had suddenly gone into a dive, and Harry was quite sure that this was no Wronski Feint; this was the real thing . ‘He’s seen the Snitch!’ Harry shouted. ‘He’s seen it! Look at him go!’ Half the crowd seemed to have realised what was happening, the Irish supporters rose in a great wave of green, screaming their Seeker on . but Krum was on his tail. How he could see where he was going, Harry had no idea; there were flecks of blood flying through the air behind him, but he was drawing level with Lynch now, as the pair of them hurtled towards the ground again – ‘They’re going to crash!’ shrieked Hermione. ‘They’re not!’ roared Ron. ‘Lynch is!’ yelled Harry. And he was right – for the second time, Lynch hit the ground with tremendous force, and was immediately stamped¬ed by a horde of angry Veela. ‘The Snitch, where’s the Snitch?’ bellowed Charlie, along the row. ‘He’s got it – Krum’s got it – it’s all over!’ shouted Harry. Krum, his red robes shining with blood from his nose, was rising gently into the air, his fist held high, a glint of gold in his hand. The scoreboard was flashing BULGARIA: ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY, IRELAND: ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY across the crowd, who didn’t seem to have realised what had happened. Then, slowly, as though a great jumbo jet was revving up, the rumbling from the Ireland supporters grew louder and louder and erupted into screams of delight. ‘IRELAND WIN!’ shouted Bagman, who, like the Irish, seemed to have been taken aback by the sudden end of the match. ‘KRUM GETS THE SNITCH – BUT IRELAND WIN – good Lord, I don’t think any of us were expecting that!’ ‘What did he catch the Snitch for?’ Ron bellowed, even as he jumped up and down, applauding with his hands over his head. ‘He ended it when Ireland were a hundred and sixty points ahead, the idiot!’ ‘He knew they were never going to catch up,’ Harry shouted back over all the noise, also applauding loudly, ‘the Irish Chasers were too good . he wanted to end it on his terms, that’s all .’ ‘He was very brave, wasn’t he?’ Hermione said, leaning for¬ward to watch Krum land, and the swarm of mediwizards blasting a path through the battling leprechauns and Veela to get to him. ‘He looks a terrible mess .’ Harry put his Omnioculars to his eyes again. It was hard to see what was happening below, because leprechauns were zooming delightedly all over the pitch, but he could just make out Krum, surrounded by mediwizards. He looked surlier than ever, and refused to let them mop him up. His team-mates were around him, shaking their heads and looking dejected; a short way away, the Irish players were dancing gleefully in a shower of gold descending from their mascots. Flags were waving all over the stadium, the Irish national anthem blared from all sides; the Veela were shrinking back into their usual, beautiful selves now, though looking dispirited and forlorn. ‘Vell, ve fought bravely,’ said a gloomy voice behind Harry. He looked around; it was the Bulgarian Minister for Magic. ‘You can speak English!’ said Fudge, sounding outraged. ‘And you’ve been letting me mime everything all day!’ ‘Vell, it vos very funny,’ said the Bulgarian Minister, shrug¬ging. ‘And as the Irish team perform a lap of honour, flanked by their mascots, the Quidditch World Cup itself is brought into the Top Box!’ roared Bagman. Harry’s eyes were suddenly dazzled by a blinding white light, as the Top Box was magically illuminated so that every¬one in the stands could see the inside. Squinting towards the entrance, he saw two panting wizards carrying into the box a vast golden cup, which they handed to Cornelius Fudge, who was still looking very disgruntled that he’d been using sign language all day for nothing. ‘Let’s have a really loud hand for the gallant losers –Bulgaria!’ Bagman shouted. And up the stairs into the box came the seven defeated Bulgarian players. The crowd below were applauding apprecia¬tively; Harry could see thousands and thousands of Omniocular lenses flashing and winking in their direction. One by one, the Bulgarians filed between the rows of seats in the box, and Bagman called out the name of each as they shook hands with their own Minister and then with Fudge. Krum, who was last in line, looked a real mess. Two black eyes were blooming spectacularly on his bloody face. He was still holding the Snitch. Harry noticed that he seemed much less co-ordinated on the ground. He was slightly duck-footed and distinctly round-shouldered. But when Krum’s name was announced, the whole stadium gave him a resounding, ear-splitting roar. And then came the Irish team. Aidan Lynch was being sup¬ported by Moran and Connolly; the second crash seemed to have dazed him and his eyes looked strangely.