Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling [227]
Harry was not thinking about Devil’s Snare. He was remembering taking the lift down to the ninth level of the Ministry on the day of his hearing, and the sallow-faced man who had got in on the Atrium level.
“I met Bode,” he said slowly. “I saw him at the Ministry with your dad …”
Ron’s mouth fell open.
“I’ve heard Dad talk about him at home! He was an Unspeakable — he worked in the Department of Mysteries!”
They looked at one another for a moment, then Hermione pulled the newspaper back toward her, closed it, glared for a moment at the pictures of the ten escaped Death Eaters on the front, then leapt to her feet.
“Where are you going?” said Ron, startled.
“To send a letter,” said Hermione, swinging her bag onto her shoulder. “It … well, I don’t know whether … but it’s worth trying … and I’m the only one who can …”
“I hate it when she does that,” grumbled Ron as he and Harry got up from the table and made their own, slower way out of the Great Hall. “Would it kill her to tell us what she’s up to for once? It’d take her about ten more seconds — hey, Hagrid!”
Hagrid was standing beside the doors into the entrance hall, waiting for a crowd of Ravenclaws to pass. He was still as heavily bruised as he had been on the day he had come back from his mission to the giants and there was a new cut right across the bridge of his nose.
“All righ’, you two?” he said, trying to muster a smile but managing only a kind of pained grimace.
“Are you okay, 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 students passing 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 chili powder on them salamanders or their tails’ll be hangin’ off ’em next. See yeh, Harry … Ron …”
He trudged away, out 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. Rumors 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 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, who had an uncle, aunt, and cousins who had all died at the hands of one of the ten, said miserably during Herbology that she