n -- a 
cackle of high- pitched laughter -


"Harry! Harry... wake up...." 

Lupin was tapping Harry hard on the face. This time it was a minute 
before Harry understood why he was lying on a dusty classroom floor. 

"I heard my dad," Harry mumbled. "That's the first time I've ever heard 
him -- he tried to take on Voldemort himself, to give my mum time to run 
for it...." 

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Harry suddenly realized that there were tears on his face mingling with 
the sweat. He bent his face as low as possible, wiping them off on his 
robes, pretending to do up his shoelace, so that Lupin wouldn't see. 


"You heard James?" said Lupin in a strange voice. 


"Yeah..." Face dry, Harry looked up. "Why -- you didn't know my dad, did 
you?" 


"I -- I did, as a matter of fact," said Lupin. "We were friends at 
Hogwarts. Listen, Harry -- perhaps we should leave it here for tonight. 
This charm is ridiculously advanced.... I shouln't have suggested 
putting you through this...." 


"No!" said Harry. He got up again. "I'll have one more go! I'm not 
thinking of happy enough things, that's what it is.... Hang on...." 


He racked his brains. A really, really happy memory... one that he could 
turn into a good, strong Patronus... 


The moment when he'd first found out he was a wizard, and would be 
leaving the Dursleys for Hogwarts! If that wasn't a happy memory, he 
didn't know what was.... Concentrating very hard on how he had felt when 
he'd realized he'd be leaving Privet Drive, Harry got to his feet and 
faced the packing case once more. 


"Ready?" said Lupin, who looked as though he were doing this against his 
better judgment. "Concentrating hard? All right -- go!" 


He pulled off the lid of the case for the third time, and the dementor 
rose out of it; the room fell cold and dark 


'EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Harry bellowed. "EXPECTO PATRONUM! 
EXPECTO PATRONUM! 
" 


The screaming inside Harry's head had started again -- except this time, 
it sounded as though it were coming from a badly tuned radio -- softer 
and louder and softer again -- and he could still see the dementor -- it 


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had halted -- and then a huge, silver shadow came bursting out of the 
end of Harry's wand, to hover between him and the dementor, and though 
Harry's legs felt like water, he was still on his feet -- though for how 
much longer, he wasn't sure -


"Riddikulus!" roared Lupin, springing forward. 
There was a loud crack, and Harry's cloudy Patronus vanished along with 
the dementor; he sank into a chair, feeling as exhausted as if he'd just 
run a mile, and felt his legs shaking. Out of the corner of his eye, he 


saw Professor Lupin forcing the boggart back into the packing case with 
his wand; it had turned into a silvery orb again. 
"Excellent!" Lupin said, striding over to where Harry sat. "Excellent, 


Harry! That was definitely a start!" 
"Can we have another go? Just one more go?" 
"Not now," said Lupin firmly. "You've had enough for one night. Here --" 
He handed Harry a large bar of Honeydukes' best chocolate. 
"Eat the lot, or Madam Pomfrey will be after my blood. Same time next 


week?" 
"Okay," said Harry. He took a bite of the chocolate and watched Lupin 


extinguishing the lamps that had rekindled with the disappearance of the 
dementor. A thought had just occurred to him. 
"Professor Lupin?" he said. "If you knew my dad, you must've known 

Sirius Black as well." 
Lupin turned very quickly. 
"What gives you that idea?" he said sharply. 
"Nothing -- I mean, I just knew they were friends at Hogwarts too...." 
Lupin's face relaxed. 


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"Yes, I knew him," he said shortly. "Or I thought I did. You'd better be 
off, Harry, it's getting late." 

Harry left the classroom, walking along the corridor and around a 
corner, then took a detour behind a suit of armor and sank down on its 
plinth to finish his chocolate, wishing he hadn't mentioned Black, as 
Lupin was obviously not keen on the subject. Then Harry's thoughts 
wandered back to his mother and father... 

He felt drained and strangely empty, even though he was so full of 
chocolate. Terrible though it was to hear his parents' last moments 
replayed inside his head, these were the only times Harry had heard 
their voices since he was a very small child. But he'd never be able to 
produce a proper Patronus if he half wanted to hear his parents 
again.... 

"They're dead," he told himself sternly. "They're dead and listening to 
echoes of them won't bring them back. You'd better get a grip on 
yourself if you want that Quidditch Cup." 

He stood up, crammed the last bit of chocolate into his mouth, and 
headed back to Gryffindor Tower. 

Ravenclaw played Slytherin a week after the start of term. Slytherin 
won, though narrowly. According to Wood, this was good news for 
Gryffindor, who would take second place if they beat Ravenclaw too. He 
therefore increased the number of team practices to five a leek. This 
meant that with Lupin's anti-dementor classes, which in themselves were 
more draining than six Quidditch practices, Harry had just one night a 
week to do all his homework. Even so, he was showing the strain nearly 
as much as Hermione, whose immense workload finally seemed to be getting 
to her. Every night, without fail, Hermione was to be seen in a corner 
of the common room, several tables spread with books, Arithmancy charts, 
rune dictionaries, diagrams of Muggles lifting heavy objects, and file 
upon file of extensive notes; she barely spoke to anybody and snapped 
when she was interrupted. 

"How's she doing it?" Ron muttered to Harry one evening as Harry sat 
finishing a nasty essay on Undetectable Poisons for Snape. Harry looked 
up. Hermione was barely visible behind a tottering pile of books. 

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"Doing what?" 

"Getting to all her classes!" Ron said. "I heard her talking to 
Professor Vector, that Arithmancy witch, this morning. They were going 
on about yesterday's lesson, but Hermione can't 've been there, because 
she was with us in Care of Magical Creatures! And Ernie McMillan told me 
she's never missed a Muggle Studies class, but half of them are at the 
same time as Divination, and she's never missed one of them either!" 

Harry didn't have time to fathom the mystery of Hermione's impossible 
schedule at the moment; he really needed to get on with Snape's essay. 
Two seconds later, however, he was interrupted again, this time by Wood. 

"Bad news, Harry. I've just been to see Professor McGonagall about the 
Firebolt. She -- er -- got a bit shirty with me. Told m' I'd got my 
priorities wrong. Seemed to think I cared more about winning the Cup 
than I do about you staying alive. Just because I told her I didn't care 
if it threw you off, as long as you caught the Snitch first." Wood shook 
his head in disbelief. "Honestly, the way she was yelling at me... you'd 
think I'd said something terrible... then I asked her how much longer 
she was going to keep it. He screwed up his face and imitated Professor 
McGonagall's severe voice. 'As long as necessary, Wood'... I reckon it's 
time you ordered a new broom, Harry. There's an order form at the back 
of Which Broomstick... you could get a Nimbus Two Thousand and One, like 
Malfoy's got." 

"I'm not buying anything Malfoy thinks is good," said Harry flatly. 

January faded imperceptibly into February, with no change in the 
bitterly cold weather. The match against Ravenclaw was drawing nearer 
and nearer, but Harry still hadn't ordered a new broom. He was now 
asking Professor McGonagall for news of the Firebolt after every 
Transfiguration lesson, Ron standing hopefully at his shoulder, Hermione 
rushing past with her face averted. 

"No, Potter, you can't have it back yet," Professor McGonagall told him 
the twelfth time this happened, before he'd even opened his mouth. 
"We've checked for most of the usual curses, but Professor Flitwick 
believes the broom might be carrying a Hurling Hex. I shall tell you 

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once we've finished checking it. Now, please stop badgering me." 

To make matters even worse, Harry's anti-dementor lessons were not going 
nearly as well as he had hoped. Several sessions on, he was able to 
produce an indistinct, silvery shadow every time the boggart-dementor 
approached him, but his Patronus was too feeble to drive the dementor 
away. All it did was hover, like a semitransparent cloud, draining Harry 
of energy as he fought to keep it there. Harry felt angry with himself, 
guilty about his secret desire to hear his parents' voices again. 

"You're expecting too much of yourself," said Professor Lupin, sternly 
in their fourth week of practice. "For a thirteen-year-old wizard, even 
an indistinct Patronus is a huge achievement. You aren't passing out 
anymore, are you?" 

I thought a Patronus would -- charge the dementors down or something," 
said Harry dispiritedly. "Make them disappear --" 

"The true Patronus does do that," said Lupin. "But you've achieved a 
great deal in a very short space of time. If the dementors put in an 
appearance at your next Quidditch match, You will be able to keep them 
at bay long enough to get back to the ground." 

"You said it's harder if there are loads of them," said Harry. 

"I have complete confidence in you," said Lupin, smiling. "Here -you've 
earned a drink - something from the Three Broomsticks. You won't 
have tried it before --" 

He pulled two bottles out of his briefcase. 

"Butterbeer!" said Harry, without thinking. "Yeah, I like that stuff!" 

Lupin raised an eyebrow. 

"Oh -Ron and Hermione brought me some back from Hogsmeade," Harry lied 
quickly. 

I see," said Lupin, though he still looked slightly suspicious. "Well -let's 
drink to a Gryffindor victory agains