ital wing, I think," he said. "Bad headache."
"My dear, you were undoubtedly stimulated by the extraordinary clairvoyant
vibrations of my room!" said Professor Trelawney. "If you leave now, you may
lose the opportunity to see further than you have ever -"
"I don't want to see anything except a headache cure," said Harry.
He stood up. The class backed away. They all looked unnerved.
"See you later," Harry muttered to Ron, and he picked up his bag and headed for
the trapdoor, ignoring Professor Trelawney, who was wearing an expression of
great frustration, as though she had just been denied a real treat.
When Harry reached the bottom of her stepladder, however, he did not set off for
the hospital wing. He had no intention whatsoever of going there. Sirius had told
him what to do if his scar hurt him again, and Harry was going to follow his
advice: He was going straight to Dumbledore's office. He marched down the
corridors, thinking about what he had seen in the dream . . . it had been as vivid as
the one that had awoken him on Privet Drive. . . . He ran over the details in his
mind, trying to make sure he could remember them. . . . He had heard Voldemort
accusing Wormtail of making a blunder . . . but the owl had brought good news,
the blunder had been repaired, somebody was dead ... so Wormtail was not going
to be fed to the snake . . . he, Harry, was going to be fed to it instead. . . .
Harry had walked right past the stone gargoyle guarding the entrance to
Dumbledores office without noticing. He blinked, looked around, realized what he
had done, and retraced his steps, stopping in front of it. Then he remembered that
he didn't know the password.
"Sherbet lemon?" he tried tentatively.
The gargoyle did not move.
"Okay," said Harry, staring at it, "Pear Drop. Er - Licorice Wand. Fizzing
Whizbee. Drooble's Best Blowing Gum. Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans ... oh
no, he doesn't like them, does he?... oh just open, can't you?" he said angrily. "I
really need to see him, its urgent!"
The gargoyle remained immovable.
Harry kicked it, achieving nothing but an excruciating pain in his big toe.
"Chocolate Frog!" he yelled angrily, standing on one leg. "Sugar Quill! Cockroach
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Cluster!"
The gargoyle sprang to life and jumped aside. Harry blinked.
"Cockroach Cluster?" he said, amazed. "I was only joking. ..."
He hurried through the gap in the walls and stepped onto the foot of a spiral stone
staircase, which moved slowly upward as the doors closed behind him, taking him
up to a polished oak door with a brass door knocker.
He could hear voices from inside the office. He stepped off the moving staircase
and hesitated, listening.
"Dumbledore, I'm afraid I don't see the connection, don't see it at all!" It was the
voice of the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge. "Ludo says Berthas perfectly
capable of getting herself lost. I agree we would have expected to have found her
by now, but all the same, we've no evidence of foul play, Dumbledore, none at all.
As for her disappearance being linked with Barty Crouch's!"
"And what do you thinks happened to Barty Crouch, Minister?" said Moody's
growling voice.
"I see two possibilities, Alastor," said Fudge. "Either Crouch has finally cracked -
more than likely, I'm sure you'll agree, given his personal history - lost his mind,
and gone wandering off somewhere -"
"He wandered extremely quickly, if that is the case, Cornelius," said Dumbledore
calmly.
"Or else - well..." Fudge sounded embarrassed. "Well, I'll reserve judgment until
after I've seen the place where he was found, but you say it was just past the
Beauxbatons carriage? Dumbledore, you know what that woman is?"
"I consider her to be a very able headmistress - and an excellent dancer," said
Dumbledore quietly.
"Dumbledore, come!" said Fudge angrily. "Don't you think you might be
prejudiced in her favor because of Hagrid? They don't all turn out harmless - if,
indeed, you can call Hagrid harmless, with that monster fixation he's got -"
"I no more suspect Madame Maxime than Hagrid," said Dumbledore, just as
calmly. "I think it possible that it is you who are prejudiced, Cornelius."
"Can we wrap up this discussion?" growled Moody.
"Yes, yes, let's go down to the grounds, then," said Fudge impatiently.
"No, it's not that," said Moody, "it's just that Potter wants a word with you,
Dumbledore. He's just outside the door."
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CHAPTER THIRTY - THE PENSIEVE
The door of the office opened.
"Hello, Potter," said Moody. "Come in, then."
Harry walked inside. He had been inside Dumbledore's office once before; it was a
very beautiful, circular room, lined with pictures of previous headmasters and
headmistresses of Hogwarts, all of whom were fast asleep, their chests rising and
falling gently.
Cornelius Fudge was standing beside Dumbledore's desk, wearing his usual
pinstriped cloak and holding his lime-green bowler hat.
"Harry!" said Fudge jovially, moving forward. "How are you?"
"Fine," Harry lied.
"We were just talking about the night when Mr. Crouch turned up on the grounds,"
said Fudge. "It was you who found him, was it not?"
"Yes," said Harry. Then, feeling it was pointless to pretend that he hadn't
overheard what they had been saying, he added, "I didn't see Madame Maxime
anywhere, though, and she'd have a job hiding, wouldn't she?"
Dumbledore smiled at Harry behind Fudge's back, his eyes twinkling.
"Yes, well," said Fudge, looking embarrassed, "we're about to go for a short walk
on the grounds, Harry, if you'll excuse us ... perhaps if you just go back to your
class -"
"I wanted to talk to you. Professor," Harry said quickly, looking at Dumbledore,
who gave him a swift, searching look.
"Wait here for me, Harry," he said. "Our examination of the grounds will not take
long."
They trooped out in silence past him and closed the door. After a minute or so,
Harry heard the clunks of Moody's wooden leg growing fainter in the corridor
below. He looked around.
"Hello, Fawkes," he said.
Fawkes, Professor Dumbledore's phoenix, was standing on his golden perch beside
the door. The size of a swan, with magnificent scarlet-and-gold plumage, he
swished his long tail and blinked benignly at Harry.
Harry sat down in a chair in front of Dumbledore's desk. For several minutes, he
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sat and watched the old headmasters and headmistresses snoozing in their frames,
thinking about what he had just heard, and running his fingers over his scar. It had
stopped hurting now.
He felt much calmer, somehow, now that he was in Dumbledore's office, knowing
he would shortly be telling him about the dream. Harry looked up at the walls
behind the desk. The patched and ragged Sorting Hat was standing on a shelf. A
glass case next to it held a magnificent silver sword with large rubies set into the
hilt, which Harry recognized as the one he himself had pulled out of the Sorting
Hat in his second year. The sword had once belonged to Godric Gryffindor,
founder of Harry's House. He was gazing at it, remembering how it had come to
his aid when he had thought all hope was lost, when he noticed a patch of silvery
light, dancing and shimmering on the glass case. He looked around for the source
of the light and saw a sliver of silver-white shining brightly from within a black
cabinet behind him, whose door had not been closed properly. Harry hesitated,
glanced at Fawkes, then got up, walked across the office, and pulled open the
cabinet door.
A shallow stone basin lay there, with odd carvings around the edge: runes and
symbols that Harry did not recognize. The silvery light was coming from the
basin's contents, which were like nothing Harry had ever seen before. He could not
tell whether the substance was liquid or gas. It was a bright, whitish silver, and it
was moving ceaselessly; the surface of it became ruffled like water beneath wind,
and then, like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made
liquid - or like wind made solid - Harry couldn't make up his mind.
He wanted to touch it, to find out what it felt like, but nearly four years' experience
of the magical world told him that sticking his hand into a bowl full of some
unknown substance was a very stupid thing to do. He therefore pulled his wand
out of the inside of his robes, cast a nervous look around the office, looked back at
the contents of the basin, and prodded them.
The surface of the silvery stuff inside the basin began to swirl very fast.
Harry bent closer, his head right inside the cabinet. The silvery substance had
become transparent; it looked like glass. He looked down into it expecting to see
the stone bottom of the basin - and saw instead an enormous room below the
surface of the mysterious substance, a room into which he seemed to be looking
through a circular window in the ceiling.
The room was dimly lit; he thought it might even be underground, for there were
no windows, merely torches in brackets such as the ones that illuminated the walls
of Hogwarts. Lowering his face so that his nose was a mere inch away from the
glassy substance, Harry saw that rows and rows of witches and wizards were
seated around every wall on what seemed to be benches rising in levels. An empty
chair stood in the very center of the room. There was something about the chair
that gave Harry an ominous feeling. Chains encircled the arms of it, as though its
occupants were usually tied to it.
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Where was this place? It surely wasn't Hogwarts; he had never seen a room like
that here in the castle. Moreover, the crowd in the mysterious room at the bottom
of the basin was comprised of adults, and Harry knew there were not nearly that
many teachers at Hogwarts. They seemed, he thought, to be waiting for
something; even though he could only see the tops of their hats, all of their faces
seemed to be pointing in one direction, and none of them were talking to one
