Daylight || Harry Potter

Chapter Twenty-Two

It seemed that Harry had decided to pretend like what had happened that night never happened. He acted as he normally did around me, to the point where if it hadn't been for Ginny sending me encouraging looks throughout the morning, I would've thought I'd dreamed about it.

The rest of the break passed. Mr. Weasley was finally healed and came back from St. Mungo's, we had a cheerful enough Christmas, and Harry learned, much to his displeasure, that he'd have to take lessons with Snape to close his mind and make sure Voldemort couldn't get inside his head. Not much happened as we left Grimmauld Place for Hogwarts again.

When the spring semester started up and Harry began taking his lessons with Snape, it felt very dull, just going through day after day of school, homework, and sleep. When the DA meetings finally started up again, I was glad to have something fun to do again.

Then Hermione's Daily Prophet came one morning announcing on the front page that ten Death Eaters had escaped from Azkaban. ten black-and-white photographs that filled the whole of the front page, nine showing wizards' faces and the tenth, a witch's. Some of the people in the photographs were silently jeering; others were tapping their fingers on the frame of their pictures, looking insolent. Each picture was captioned with a name and the crime for which the person had been sent to Azkaban.

"Antonin Dolohov, convicted of the brutal murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett." I read the legend beneath a wizard with a long, pale, twisted face who was sneering up at me."Gideon and Fabian... Ron weren't those your mom's brothers? Your uncles?"

"Yeah." Ron nodded. "Fred and George were named after them. Fabian is Fred's middle name, and Gideon is George's."

"Bellatrix Lestrange," Harry said, pointing at the picture of the witch. "Convicted of the torture and permanent incapacitation of Frank and Alice Longbottom."

She had long, dark hair that looked unkempt and straggly. She glared up at him me through heavily lidded eyes, an arrogant, disdainful smile playing around her thin mouth.

"Sirius' cousin," I said. "Her eyes are the same color and shape as his."

Hermione nudged Harry and pointed at the headline over the pictures.

"Mass breakout from Azkaban, Ministry fears Black is rallying point for old Death Eaters," Harry muttered. He frowned. "Black? Not — ?"

"Shhh!" whispered Hermione desperately. "Not so loud — just read it!"

I did. Basically the Ministry was now claiming that the ten Death Eaters that had broken out had outside help. I thought this was obvious, but they were claiming that their outside help was Sirius.

"I don't believe this," snarled Harry, "Fudge is blaming the breakout on Sirius?"

"What other options does he have?" said Hermione bitterly. "He can hardly say, 'Sorry everyone, Dumbledore warned me this might happen, the Azkaban guards have joined Lord Voldemort' — stop whimpering, Ron — 'and now Voldemort's worst supporters have broken out too.' I mean, he's spent a good six months telling everyone you and Dumbledore are liars, hasn't he?"

Hermione ripped open the newspaper and began to read the report inside. Her expression fell. "Oh my —"

"What now?" said Harry quickly, tearing his gaze away from the staff table, where Umbridge was scowling at Dumbledore and McGonagall, who seemed to be having a grave conversation.

"It's . . . horrible," said Hermione, looking shaken. She folded back page ten of the newspaper and handed it back to Harry and Ron. "A Ministry worker was killed by a plant by his bedside."

"Bode . . ." said Ron. "Bode. It rings a bell. . . ."

"We saw him," Hermione whispered. "In St. Mungo's, remember? And we saw the Devil's Snare arrive. She — the Healer — said it was a Christmas present..."