Dawn Rivera

Detention with Delores

Dinner in the Great Hall that night is not a pleasant experience for Harry and Danny. The news about their shouting match with Umbridge has travelled exceptionally fast even by Hogwarts' standards. I hear whispers all around me as I sit eating with Ron, Hermione, Harry and Danny. The funny thing is that none of the whisperers seem to mind Harry and Danny overhearing what they are saying about them. On the contrary, it is as though they are hoping they'll get angry and start shouting again, so that they can hear their story first-hand.

"They say they saw Cedric Diggory murdered..."

"They reckon they duelled with You-Know-Who..."

"Come off it..."

"Who do they think they're kidding?"

"Pur-lease..."

"What I don't get," says Harry through clenched teeth, lying down his knife and fork, "is why they all believed the story two months ago when Dumbledore told them..."

"The thing is, Harry, I'm not sure they did," I say grimly. "Oh, let's get out of here."

Hermione and I slam down our own knives and forks; Ron looks longing at his half-finished apple pie but follows suit. People stare at us all the way out of the Hall.

"What d'you mean, you're not sure they believed Dumbledore?" Danny asks me when we reach the first-floor landing.

"Look, you don't understand what it was like after it happened," says Hermione quietly, when I don't answer. "You two arrived back in the middle of the lawn clutching Cedric's dead body...none of us saw what happened in the maze...we just had Dumbledore's word for it that You-Know-Who had come back and killed Cedric and fought you."

"Which is the truth!" says Harry loudly.

"We know it is, Harry, so will you please stop biting our heads off?" I say wearily. "It's just that before the truth could sink in, everyone went home for the summer, where they spent two months reading about how you're nutcases and Dumbledore's going senile!"

Rain pounds on the windowpanes as we stride along the empty corridors back to Gryffindor Tower. I feel as though my first day lasted a week, but I still have a mountain of homework to do before I go to bed. A dull pounding pain is developing in my right eye. I glance out of the rain-washed window at the dark grounds as we turn into the Fat Lady's corridor. There is still no light in Hagrid's cabin.

"Mimbulus mimbletonia," says Hermione, before the Fat Lady can ask. The portrait swings open to reveal the hole behind it and the five of us scramble through it.

The common room is almost empty; nearly everyone is still down at dinner. Crookshanks and Lizzie uncoil themselves from an armchair and trot to meet us, purring loudly, and when Harry, Danny, Ron, Hermione and I take our five favourite chairs at the fireside they leap lightly on to Hermione and I's laps and curl up there like furry ginger and tortoiseshell cushions. I gaze at the flames, feeling drained and exhausted.

"How can Dumbledore have let this happen?" I cry suddenly, making Hermione, Harry, Danny and Ron jump; Crookshanks and Lizzie leap off Hermione and I, looking affronted. I pound the arms of my chair in fury, so that bits of stuffing leak out of the holes. "How can he let that terrible woman teach us? And in our OWL year, too!"

"Well, we've never had great Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers, have we?" says Danny, taking Hermione's hand. "You know what it's like, Hagrid told us, nobody wants the job; they say it's jinxed."

"Yes, but to employ someone who's actually refusing to let us do magic!" Hermione says, shifting her hand slightly so that her and Danny's fingers are laced together. I look at their intertwined hands. Harry and I used to be like that. "What's Dumbledore playing at?"