Honey Bee

Chapter 37

The door of the office opened.

"Hello, Potter, Melissa," said Moody. "Come in, then."

We walked inside. I had never been inside Dumbledore's office 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.

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 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, Melissa, if you'll excuse us ... perhaps if you just go back to your class -"

"We wanted to talk to you. Professor," Harry said quickly, looking at Dumbledore, who gave him a swift, searching look.

"Wait here for me," 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, I heard the clunks of Moody's wooden leg growing fainter in the corridor below. We looked around.

"Hello, Fawkes," he said.

Fawkes was Professor Dumbledore's phoenix, and 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 me.

We sat down in a chair in front of Dumbledore's desk. For several minutes, we sat and watched the old headmasters and headmistresses snoozing in their frames, running my fingers over my scar. It had stopped hurting now.

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 recognised and explained 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 our House.

I looked around for the source of a light, which was hurting my eyes, and saw a sliver of silver-white shining brightly from within a black cabinet behind him, whose door had not been closed properly. I hesitated, glanced at Fawkes, then got up, walked across the office, and pulled open the cabinet door.

"Melissa?" Harry hissed at me. "What are you doing?"

"Just looking." I replied.

A shallow stone basin lay there, with odd carvings around the edge: runes and symbols that I did not recognise. The silvery light was coming from the basin's contents, which were like nothing I had ever seen before. I 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 - I couldn't make up my mind.

I wanted to touch it, to find out what it felt like, but sticking my hand into a bowl full of some unknown substance was a very stupid thing to do. Therefore I pulled my wand out of the inside of my coat, cast a nervous look around the office and at Harry, looked back at the contents of the basin, and prodded them.