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“He hasn’t,” said Harry curtly.

“How do you know?” said Ron and Hermione together.

“Because —” Harry hesitated, but the moment to confess finally seemed to have come. There was no good to be gained in keeping silent if it meant anyone suspected that Fred and George were criminals. “Because they got the gold from me. I gave them my Triwizard winnings last June.”

There was a shocked silence, then Hermione’s teacup jogged right over the edge of the desk and smashed on the floor.

“Oh, Harry, you didn’t!” she said.

“Yes, I did,” said Harry mutinously. “And I don’t regret it either — I didn’t need the gold, and they’ll be great at a joke shop. …”

“But this is excellent!” said Ron, looking thrilled. “It’s all your fault, Harry — Mum can’t blame me at all! Can I tell her?”

“Yeah, I suppose you’d better,” said Harry dully. “ ’Specially if she thinks they’re receiving stolen cauldrons or something. …”

Hermione said nothing at all for the rest of the lesson, but Harry had a shrewd suspicion that her self-restraint was bound to crack before long. Sure enough, once they had left the castle for break and were standing around in the weak May sunshine, she fixed Harry with a beady eye and opened her mouth with a determined air.

Harry interrupted her before she had even started.

“It’s no good nagging me, it’s done,” he said firmly. “Fred and George have got the gold — spent a good bit of it too, by the sounds of it — and I can’t get it back from them and I don’t want to. So save your breath, Hermione.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything about Fred and George!” she said in an injured voice.

Ron snorted disbelievingly and Hermione threw him a very dirty look.

“No, I wasn’t!” she said angrily. “As a matter of fact, I was going to ask Harry when he’s going to go back to Snape and ask for Occlumency lessons again!”

Harry’s heart sank. Once they had exhausted the subject of Fred and George’s dramatic departure, which admittedly had taken many hours, Ron and Hermione had wanted to hear news of Sirius. As Harry had not confided in them the reason he had wanted to talk to Sirius in the first place, it had been hard to think of things to tell them. He had ended up saying to them truthfully that Sirius wanted Harry to resume Occlumency lessons. He had been regretting this ever since; Hermione would not let the subject drop and kept reverting to it when Harry least expected it.

“You can’t tell me you’ve stopped having funny dreams,” Hermione said now, “because Ron told me last night you were muttering in your sleep again. …”

Harry threw Ron a furious look. Ron had the grace to look ashamed of himself.

“You were only muttering a bit,” he mumbled apologetically. “Something about ‘just a bit farther.’ ”

“I dreamed I was watching you lot play Quidditch,” Harry lied brutally. “I was trying to get you to stretch out a bit farther to grab the Quaffle.”

Ron’s ears went red. Harry felt a kind of vindictive pleasure: He had not, of course, dreamed anything of the sort.

Last night he had once again made the journey along the Department of Mysteries corridor. He had passed through the circular room, then the room full of clicking and dancing light, until he found himself again inside that cavernous room full of shelves on which were ranged dusty glass spheres. …

He had hurried straight toward row number ninety-seven, turned left, and ran along it. … It had probably been then that he had spoken aloud. … Just a bit farther … for he could feel his conscious self struggling to wake … and before he had reached the end of the row, he had found himself lying in bed again, gazing up at the canopy of his four-poster.

“You are trying to block your mind, aren’t you?” said Hermione, looking beadily at Harry. “You are keeping going with your Occlumency?”

“Of course I am,” said Harry, trying to sound as though this question was insulting, but not quite meeting her eye. The truth was that he was so intensely curious about what was hidden in that room full of dusty orbs that he was quite keen for