The Big Dipper

Nightmares

It was well past midnight in the Gryffindor common room, as Hermione helped Harry and Ron rewrite their Astronomy essays, when Harry saw something in the fire that could not have been there. It had flashed into sight and vanished immediately. No... it could not have been... He had imagined it because he had been thinking about Sirius...

"Okay, write that down," Hermione said to Ron, pushing his essay and a sheet covered in her own writing back to Ron, "and then copy out this conclusion that I've written for you."

"Hermione, you are honestly the most wonderful person I've ever met," said Ron weakly, "and if I'm ever rude to you again —"

"— I'll know you're back to normal," said Hermione. "Harry, yours is okay except for this bit at the end, I think you must have misheard Professor Sinistra, Europa's covered in ice, not mice — Harry?"

Harry had slid off his chair onto his knees and was now crouching on the singed and threadbare hearthrug, gazing into the flames.

"Er — Harry?" said Ron uncertainly. "Why are you down there?"

"Because I've just seen Sirius's head in the fire," said Harry.

He spoke quite calmly; after all, he had seen Sirius's head in this very fire the previous year and talked to it too. Nevertheless, he could not be sure that he had really seen it this time... It had vanished so quickly...

"Sirius's head?" Hermione repeated. "You mean like when he wanted to talk to you during the Triwizard Tournament? But he wouldn't do that now, it would be too — Sirius!"

She gasped, gazing at the fire; Ron dropped his quill. There in the middle of the dancing flames sat Sirius's head, long dark hair falling around his grinning face.

"I was starting to think you'd go to bed before everyone else had disappeared," he said. "I've been checking every hour."

"You've been popping into the fire every hour?" Harry said, half laughing.

"Just for a few seconds to check if the coast was clear yet."

"But what if you'd been seen?" said Hermione anxiously.

"Well, I think a girl — first year by the look of her — might've got a glimpse of me earlier, but don't worry," Sirius said hastily, as Hermione clapped a hand to her mouth. "I was gone the moment she looked back at me and I'll bet she just thought I was an oddly shaped log or something."

"But Sirius, this is taking an awful risk —" Hermione began.

"You sound like Molly," said Sirius. "This was the only way I could come up with of answering Harry's letter without resorting to a code — and codes are breakable."

At the mention of Harry's letter, Hermione and Ron had both turned to stare at him.

"You didn't say you'd written to Sirius!" said Hermione accusingly.

"I forgot," said Harry, which was perfectly true; his meeting with Cho in the Owlery had driven everything before it out of his mind. "Don't look at me like that, Hermione, there was no way anyone would have got secret information out of it, was there, Sirius?"

"No, it was very good," said Sirius, smiling. "Anyway, we'd better be quick, just in case we're disturbed — your scar."

"What about — ?" Ron began, but Hermione said quickly, "We'll tell you afterward, go on, Sirius."

"Well, I know it can't be fun when it hurts, but we don't think it's anything to really worry about. It kept aching all last year, didn't it?"

"Yeah, and Dumbledore said it happened whenever Voldemort was feeling a powerful emotion," said Harry, ignoring, as usual, Ron and Hermione's winces. "So maybe he was just, I dunno, really angry or something the night I had that detention."