Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Are you OK, Hagrid?” asked Harry, following him as he lumbered after the Ravenclaws.

“Fine, fine,” said Hagrid with a feeble assumption of airiness; he waved a hand and narrowly missed concussing a frightened-looking Professor Vector, who was passing. “Jus’ busy, yeh know, usual stuff—lessons ter prepare—couple o’ salamanders got scale rot—an’ I’m on probation,” he mumbled.

“You’re on probation?” said Ron very loudly, so that many of the passing students looked around curiously. “Sorry—I mean—you’re on probation?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” said Hagrid. “S’no more’n I expected, ter tell yeh the truth. Yeh migh’ not’ve picked up on it, bu’ that inspection didn’ go too well, yeh know… anyway,” he sighed deeply. “Bes’ go an’ rub a bit more chilli powder on them salamanders or their tails’ll be hangin’ off ’em next. See yeh, Harry… Ron…”

He trudged away, out of the front doors and down the stone steps into the damp grounds. Harry watched him go, wondering how much more bad news he could stand.

* * *

The fact that Hagrid was now on probation became common knowledge within the school over the next few days, but to Harry’s indignation, hardly anybody appeared to be upset about it; indeed, some people, Draco Malfoy prominent among them, seemed positively gleeful. As for the freakish death of an obscure Department of Mysteries employee in St. Mungo’s, Harry, Ron and Hermione seemed to be the only people who knew or cared. There was only one topic of conversation in the corridors now: the ten escaped Death Eaters, whose story had finally filtered through the school from those few people who read the newspapers. Rumours were flying that some of the convicts had been spotted in Hogsmeade, that they were supposed to be hiding out in the Shrieking Shack and that they were going to break into Hogwarts, just as Sirius Black had once done.

Those who came from wizarding families had grown up hearing the names of these Death Eaters spoken with almost as much fear as Voldemort’s; the crimes they had committed during the days of Voldemort’s reign of terror were legendary. There were relatives of their victims among the Hogwarts students, who now found themselves the unwilling objects of a gruesome sort of reflected fame as they walked the corridors: Susan Bones, whose uncle, aunt and cousins had all died at the hands of one of the ten, said miserably during Herbology that she now had a good idea what it felt like to be Harry.

“And I don’t know how you stand it—it’s horrible,” she said bluntly, dumping far too much dragon manure on her tray of Screechsnap seedlings, causing them to wriggle and squeak in discomfort.

It was true that Harry was the subject of much renewed muttering and pointing in the corridors these days, yet he thought he detected a slight difference in the tone of the whisperers’ voices. They sounded curious rather than hostile now, and once or twice he was sure he overheard snatches of conversation that suggested that the speakers were not satisfied with the Prophet’s version of how and why ten Death Eaters had managed to break out of the Azkaban fortress. In their confusion and fear, these doubters now seemed to be turning to the only other explanation available to them: the one that Harry and Dumbledore had been expounding since the previous year.

It was not only the students’ mood that had changed. It was now quite common to come across two or three teachers conversing in low, urgent whispers in the corridors, breaking off their conversations the moment they saw students approaching.

“They obviously can’t talk freely in the staff room any more,” said Hermione in a low voice, as she, Harry and Ron passed Professors McGonagall, Flitwick and Sprout huddled together outside the Charms classroom one day. “Not with Umbridge there.”

“Reckon they know anything new?” said Ron, gazing back over his shoulder at the three teachers.

“If they do, we’re not going to hear about it, are we?” said Harry angrily. “Not after Decree… what number are we on now?” For new notices had appeared on the house noticeboards the morning after news of the Azkaban breakout:

BY ORDER OF THE HIGH INQUISITOR OF HOGWARTS

Teachers are hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-six.

Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge, High Inquisitor

This latest Decree had been the subject of a great number of jokes among the students. Lee Jordan had pointed out to Umbridge that by the terms of the new rule she was not allowed to tell Fred and George off for playing Exploding Snap in the back of the class.