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Chapter Twelve: The Muggle-born Registration Commission
‘Ah, Mafalda!’ said Umbridge, looking at Allison. ‘Travers sent you, did he?’
‘Er-yes,’ said Allison, entering actor mode.
‘Good, you’ll do perfectly well,’ Umbridge spoke to the wizard in black and gold. ‘That’s that problem solved, Minister, if Mafalda can be spared for record-keeping we shall be able to start straightaway,’ she consulted her clipboard. ‘Ten people today and one of them the wife of a Ministry employee!! Tut, tut…even here, in the heart of the Ministry! Ms Wakefield, did you have anything to do Mrs Cattermole getting caught?’
‘Um-a little,’ said Tracey, very hesitantly.
‘Then I insist you come too,’ said Umbridge cheerfully. ‘Although since you’re applying to testify against the accused late you’ll have to wait until the main arguments have already been made for and against.’
She stepped into the lift beside Allison, as did the two wizards who had been listening to Umbridge’s conversation with the Minister.
‘We’ll go straight down, Mafalda, and you’ll find everything you need in the courtroom,’ she then spotted Harry. ‘Good morning, Albert, aren’t you getting out?’
'Yes, of course,' said Harry in Mr Runcorn’s deep voice.
Harry stepped out of the lift. The golden grilles clanged shut behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, Harry saw his best friend and girlfriend sinking back out of sight, trapped with one of, if not the most, evil women Harry knew.
'What brings you up here, Runcorn?' asked the new Minister of Magic. His long black hair and beard were streaked with silver, and a great overhanging forehead shadowed his glinting eyes, putting Harry in mind of a crab looking out from beneath a rock.
'Needed a quick word with,' Harry hesitated for a fraction of a second, 'Arthur Weasley. Someone said he was up on level one.'
'Ah,' said Pius Thickness. 'Has he been caught having contact with an Undesirable?'
'No,' said Harry, his throat dry. 'No, nothing like that.'
'Ah, well. It’s only a matter of time,' said Thicknesse. 'If you ask me, the blood traitors are as bad as the Mudbloods. Good day, Runcorn.'
‘Good day, Minister.’
Harry watched Thicknesse march away along the thickly carpeted corridor. The moment the Minister had passed out of sight, Harry tugged the Invisibility Cloak out from under his heavy black cloak, threw it over himself, and set off along the corridor in the opposite direction. Allison’s father was so tall that Harry was forced to stoop to make sure his big feet were hidden.
Panic pulsed in the pit of his stomach. As he passed gleaming wooden door after gleaming wooden door, each bearing a small plaque with the owner’s name and occupation upon it, the might of the Ministry, its complexity, its impenetrability, seemed to force itself upon him so that the plan he had been carefully concocting with his friends over the past four weeks seemed laughably childish. They had concentrated all their efforts on getting inside without being detected. They had not given a moment’s thought to what they would do if they were forced to separate. Now Allison was stuck in court proceedings, and Tracey now had to potentially doom a Muggle-born or risk getting caught, which both would undoubtedly last hours; Theodore had to find a floor he had never been to and do some potentially complicated magic, and all three of their actions effected an innocent woman’s liberty; and he, Harry, disguised as his girlfriend’s evil father, was wandering around on the top floor when he knew perfectly well that has quarry had just gone down in the lift.
He stopped walking, leaned against a wall, and tried to decide what to do. The silence pressed upon him: There was no bustling or talk or swift footsteps here; the purple-carpeted corridors were as hushed as though the Muffliato charm had been cast over the place.
Her office must be up here, Harry thought.
It seemed most unlikely that Umbridge would keep her jewelry in her office, but on the other hand it seemed foolish not to search it to make sure. He therefore set off along the corridor again, passing nobody but a frowning wizard who was murmuring instructions to a quill that floated in front of him, scribbling on a trail of parchment.
Now paying attention to the names on the doors, Harry turned a corner. Halfway along the next corridor he emerged into a wide open space where a dozen witches and wizards sat in rows at small desks not unlike school desks, though much more highly polished and free from graffiti. Harry paused to watch them, for the effect was quite mesmerizing. They were all waving and twiddling their wands in unison, and squares of coloured paper were flying in every direction like little pink kites. After a few seconds, Harry realized that there was a rhythm to the proceedings, that the papers all formed the same pattern, and after a few more seconds he realized that what he was watching was the creation of pamphlets—that the paper squares were pages, which, when assembled, folded, and magicked into place, fell into neat stacks beside each witch or wizard.
Harry crept closer, although the workers were so intent on what they were doing that he doubted they would notice a carpet-muffled footstep, and he slid a completed pamphlet from the pile beside a young witch. He examined it beneath the Invisibility Cloak. Its pink cover was emblazoned with a golden title:
"MUDBLOODS
and the Dangers They Pose to a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society"
Beneath the title was a picture of a red rose with a simpering face in the middle of its petals, being strangled by a green weed with fangs and a scowl. There was no author’s name upon the pamphlet, but again, the scars on the back of his right hand seemed to tingle as he examined it. Then the young witch beside him confirmed his suspicion as she said, still waving and twirling her wand, 'Will the old hag be interrogating Mudbloods all day, does anyone know?'
'Careful,' said the wizard beside her, glancing around nervously; one of his pages slipped and fell to the floor.
'What, has she got magic ears as well as an eye, now?'
The witch glanced toward the shining mahogany door facing the space full of pamphlet-makers; Harry looked too, and rage reared in him like a snake. Where there might have been a peephole on a Muggle front door, a large, round eye with a bright blue iris had been set into the wood—an eye that was shockingly familiar to anybody who had known Alastor Moody.
For a split second Harry forgot where he was and what he was doing there: He even forgot that he was invisible. He strode straight over to the door to examine the eye. It was not moving: It gazed blindly upward, frozen. The plaque beneath it read:
"Dolores Umbridge
Senior Undersecretary to the Minister"
Below that, a slightly shinier new plaque read:
"Head of the Muggle-born Registration Commission"
Harry looked back at the dozen pamphlet-makers: Though they were intent upon their work, he could hardly suppose that they would not notice if the door of an empty office opened in front of them. He therefore withdrew from an inner pocket an odd object with little waving legs and a rubber-bulbed horn for a body. Crouching down beneath the cloak, he placed the Decoy Detonator on the ground.
It scuttled away at once through the legs of the witches and wizards in front of him. A few moments later, during which Harry waited with his hand upon the doorknob, there came a long band and a great deal of acrid black smoke billowed from a corner. The young witch in the front row shrieked: Pink pages flew everywhere as she and her fellows jumped up, looking around for the source of the commotion. Harry turned the doorknob, stepped into Umbridge’s office, and closed the door behind him.
He felt he had stepped back in time. The room was exactly like Umbridge’s office at Hogwarts: Lace draperies, doilies, and dried flowers covered every available surface. The walls bore the same ornamental plates, each featuring a highly colored, beribboned kitten, gamboling and frisking with a sickening cuteness. The desk was covered with a flouncy, flowered cloth. Behind Mad-Eye’s eye, a telescopic attachment enabled Umbridge to spy on the workers on the other side of the door. Harry took a look through it and saw that they were all still gathered around the Decoy Detonator. He wrenched the telescope out of the door, leaving a hole behind, pulled the magical eyeball out of it, and placed it in his pocket. Then he turned to face the room again, raised his wand, and murmured, 'Accio locket.'
Nothing happened, but he had not expected it to; no doubt Umbridge knew all about protective charms and spells. He therefore hurried behind her desk and began pulling open drawers. He saw quills and notebooks and Spellotape; enchanted paper clips that coiled snakelike from their drawer and had to be beaten back; a sloppy little lace box full of spare hair bows and clips; but no sign of a locket.
There was a filing cabinet behind the desk: Harry set to searching it. Like Filch’s filing cabinets at Hogwarts, it was full of folders, each labeled with a name. It was not until Harry reached the bottommost drawer that he saw something that distracted him from his search: Mr Weasley’s file.
He pulled it out and opened it.
"Arthur Weasley
Blood Status:
Pureblood, but with unacceptable pro-Muggle leanings. Known member of the Order of the Phoenix.
Family:
Wife (pureblood), seven children, two youngest at Hogwarts.
Security Status:
TRACKED. All movements are being monitored. Moderate likelihood Undesirable No. 1 will contact (has stayed with Weasley family previously)".
'Undesirable Number One,' Harry muttered under his breath as he replaced Mr Weasley’s folder, then a scary thought entered his head. 'If they have a file on Mr Weasley than—'
Quickly he went through the L's, dishearteningly he found what he feared very quickly.
"Remus Lupin
Blood Status:
Half-breed, born Half-blood with a muggle mother, but became a Half-breed at age five. Known member of the Order of the Phoenix.
Family:
Husband (pureblood)(deceased), three adoptive children, one underage Half-breed and two Undesirables including Undesirable No. 1.
Security Status:
TRACKED. All movements are being monitored. Extreme likelihood Undesirable No. 1 will contact (Half-breed is only adoptive parent left.)"
Angry and scared, Harry shut the drawer. As he straightened up and glanced around the office for fresh hiding places, he saw a poster of himself on the wall, with the words "Undesirable No. 1" emblazoned across his chest. A little pink note was stuck to it with a picture of a kitten in the corner. Harry moved across to read it and saw that Umbridge had written, 'To be punished.'
Angrier than ever, he proceeded to grope in the bottoms of the vases and baskets of dried flowers, but was not at all surprised that the locket was not there. He gave the office one last sweeping look and his heart skipped a beat. Dumbledore was staring at him from a small rectangular mirror, propped up on a bookcase beside the desk.
Harry crossed the room and snatched it up, but realized the moment he touched it that it was not a mirror at all. Dumbledore was smiling wistfully out of the front cover of a glossy book, Harry had not immediately noticed the curly green writing across his hat—"The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore"—nor the slightly smaller writing across his chest: "by Rita skeeter, bestselling author of Armando Dippet: Master or Moron?”
Harry opened the book at random and saw a full-page photograph of two teenage boys, both laughing immoderately with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Dumbledore, now with elbow-length hair, had grown a tiny wispy beard that recalled the one on Krum’s chin. The boy who roared in silent amusement beside Dumbledore had a gleeful, wild look about him. His golden hair fell in curls to his shoulders. Harry wondered whether it was a young doge, but before he could check the caption, the door of the office opened.
If Thicknesse had not been looking over his shoulder as he entered, Harry would not have had time to pull the Invisibility cloak over himself. As it was, he thought Thicknesse might have caught a glimpse of movement because for a moment or two he remained quite still, staring curiously at the place where Harry had just vanished. Perhaps deciding that all he had seen was Dumbledore scratching his nose on the front of the book, for Harry had hastily replaced it upon the shelf. Thicknesse finally walked to the desk and pointed his wand at the quill standing ready in the ink pot. It sprang out and begun scribbling a note to Umbridge. Very slowly, hardly daring to breathe, Harry backed out of the office into the open area beyond.
The pamphlet-makers were still clustered around the remains of the Decoy Detonator, which continued to hoot feebly as it smoked. Harry hurried off up the corridor as the young witch said, 'I bet it sneaked up here from Experimental Charms, they’re so careless, remember that poisonous duck?'
Speeding back toward the lifts, Harry reviewed his options. It had never been likely that the locket was here at the Ministry, and there was no hope of bewitching its whereabouts out of Umbridge while she was sitting in a crowded court. Their priority now had to be to leave the Ministry before they were exposed, and try again another day. The first thing to do was to find Theodore, and then they could work out a way of extracting the girls from the courtroom.
The lift was empty when it arrived. Harry jumped in a pulled off the Invisibility Cloak as it started its descent. To his enormous relief, when it rattle to a halt at level two, a soaking-wet and wild-eyed Theodore got in.
'Good morning Sir,' he stammered to Harry as the lift set off again. 'Theo, it’s me, Harry! One second-Tergeo.'
The excess rain water drained off of Theodore, though his hair and close remained a little wet.
'Whoops, sorry Harry, I forgot what you looked like, although I guess I should have remembered you looked mike a meaner and more masculine version of Allison,' said Theodore, relieved, although that relief did not last. 'Speaking of which, where is she and Tracey?'
'They had to go down to the courtrooms with Umbridge, she couldn’t refuse, and—'
But before Harry could finish the lift had stopped again. The doors opened and Mr Weasley walked inside, talking to an elderly witch whose blonde hair was teased so high that it resembled an anthill.
'...I quite understand what you’re saying, Wakanda, but I’m afraid I cannot be part to—'
Mr Weasley broke off; he had noticed Harry. It was very strange to have Mr Weasley glare at him with that much dislike. The lift doors closed and the four of them trundled downward once more.
'Oh, hello, Reg,' said Mr Weasley, looking around at the sound of a couple drops from Theodore’s robes. 'Isn’t your wife in for questioning today? Er—what’s happened to you? Why are you wet?'
'Yaxley’s office was raining,' said Theodore cautiously, it was different talking to someone you actually know. 'I stopped it and now I'm heading down.'
'Well, Yaxley's isn't the first one to start randomly raining, and I don't think it'll be the last,' said Mr Weasley. 'Anyways, good luck with your wife.'
'Er, thanks.'
The lift doors opened; the old witch with the anthill hair left, and Theodore moved farther away from Mr Weasley to avoid potentially hazardous small-talk. Just then Percy Weasley strode into the lift, his nose buried in some papers he was reading.
Not until the doors had clanged shut again did Percy realize he was in a lift with his father. He glanced up, saw Mr Weasley, turned radish red, and left the lift the moment the doors opened again. Harry noticed for a while that Mr Weasley was glaring at him, and for a while he tried to ignore him, but then suddenly he felt Mr Weasley pull him to the opposite side of the elevator to where Theodore stood.
'Listen here, Runcorn,' said Mr Weasley in a venomous whisper so that Theodore wouldn't hear.
The lift doors closed and as they clanked down another floor, Mr Weasley said, 'I hear you laid information about Dirk Cresswell.'
Harry had the impression that Mr Weasley’s anger was no less because of the brush with Percy. He decided his best chance was to act stupid.
'Sorry?' he said.
'Don’t pretend, Runcorn,' said Mr Weasley fiercely. 'You hunted down the wizard who faked his family tree, didn’t you?'
'I—so what if I did?' said Harry.
'So Dirk Cresswell is ten times the wizard you are,' said Mr Weasley quietly, as the lift sank ever lower. 'And if he survives Azkaban, you’ll have to answer to him, not to mention his wife, his sons, and his friends—'
'Arthur,' Harry interrupted, 'you know you’re being tracked, don’t you?'
'Is that a threat, Runcorn?' said Mr Weasley loudly.
'No,' said Harry, 'it’s a fact! They’re watching your every move—'
The lift doors opened. They had reached the Atrium. Mr Weasley gave Harry a scathing look and swept from the lift. Harry stood there, shaken. He wished he was impersonating somebody other than Mr Runcorn...the lift doors clanged shut.
Harry pulled out the Invisibility Cloak and he and Theodore got under it.
'You shouldn't have told him that,' Theodore whispered, 'If the lift stopped and someone else over heard it could have given you away.'
'I had to warn him, it was a risk I was willing to take, like you fixing the environment charm to potentially save Mrs Cattermole.'
When the doors opened, they stepped out into a torch-lit stone passageway quite different from the wood-paneled and carpeted corridors above. As the lift rattled away again, Harry shivered slightly, looking toward the distant black door that marked the entrance to the Department of Mysteries...Where they had lost...
He set off, his destination not the black door, but the doorway he remembered on the left-hand side, which opened onto the flight of stairs down to the court chambers. His mind grappled with possibilities as he crept down them: He still had a couple of Decoy Detonators, but perhaps it would be better to simply knock on the courtroom door, have Theodore stay behind and he enter as Runcorn, and ask for a quick word with Mafalda and hope Tracey gets the silent message to sneak off too? Of course, he did not know whether Runcorn was sufficiently important to get away with this, and even if he managed it, Allison and Tracey’s non-reappearance might trigger a search before they were clear of the Ministry…
Lost in thought, he did not immediately register the unnatural chill that was creeping over him, as if he were descending into fog.
It was becoming colder and colder with every step he took: a cold that reached right down into his throat and tore at his lungs. And then he felt that stealing sense of despair, of hopelessness, filling him, expanding inside him…
Dementors, he thought.
As he reached the foot of the stairs and turned to his right he saw a dreadful scene. The dark passage outside the courtrooms was packed with tall, black-hooded figures, their faces completely hidden, their ragged breathing the only sound in the place. The petrified Muggle-borns brought in for questioning sat huddled and shivering on hard wooden benches. Most of them were hiding their faces in their hands, perhaps in an instinctive attempt to shield themselves from the dementors’ greedy mouths. Some were accompanied by families, others sat alone. The dementors were gliding up an down in front of them, and the cold, and the hopelessness, and the despair of the place laid themselves upon Harry like a curse...
Fight it, he told himself, but he knew that he could not conjure a Patronus here without revealing himself instantly.
'I need to be able to move around freely to get Allison and Tracey out, so I'll need you to stay here,' whispered Harry as Theodore quietly left the Invisibility Cloak when no one was looking. 'Reg Cattermole has a reason to be down here so you should be fine.'
Theodore nodded and Harry continued to move forward as silently as he could, and with every step he took numbness seemed to steal over his brain, but he forced himself to think of Tracey and Allison, who needed him.
Moving through the towering black figures was terrifying: The eyeless faces hidden beneath their hoods turned as he passed, and he felt sure that they sense him, sensed, perhaps, a human presence that still had some hope, some resilience...
And then, abruptly and shockingly amid the frozen silence, one of the dungeon doors on the left of the corridor was flung open and screams echoed out of it.
'No, no, I’m a half-blood, I’m a half-blood, I tell you! My father was a wizard, he was, look him up, Arkie Alderton, he’s a well-known broomstick designer, look him up, I tell you—get your hands off me, get your hands off—'
'This is your final warning,' said Umbridge’s soft voice, magically magnified so that it sounded clearly over the man’s desperate screams. 'If you struggle, you will be subjected to the Dementor’s Kiss.'
The man’s screams subsided, but dry sobs echoed through the corridor.
'Take him away,' said Umbridge.
Two dementors appeared in the doorway of the courtroom, their rotting, scabbed hands clutching the upper arms of a wizard who appeared to be fainting. They glided away down the corridor with him, and the darkness they trailed behind them swallowed him from sight.
'Next—Mary Cattermole,' called Umbridge.
A small woman stood up; she was trembling from head to foot. Her dark hair was smoothed back into a bun and she wore long, plain robes that didn't fully hide the fact that she was about five months pregnant. Her face was completely bloodless. As she passed the dementors, Harry saw her shudder.
He did it instinctively, without any sort of plan, because he hated the sight of her walking alone into the dungeon: As the door began to swing closed, he slipped into the courtroom behind her.
It was not the same room in which he had once been interrogated for improper use of magic. This one was much smaller, though the ceiling was quite as high; it gave the claustrophobic sense of being stuck at the bottom of a deep well.
There were more dementors in here, casting their freezing aura over the place; they stood like faceless sentinels in the corners farthest from the high raised platform. Here, behind a balustrade, sat Umbridge, with Yaxley on one side of her, and Allison, stoic but with fear in her eyes, on the other. In the witness stand, just as white faced as Mrs Cattermole, sat Tracey. At the foot of the platform, a bright-silver, long-haired cat prowled up and down, up and down, up and down, and Harry realized that it was there to protect the prosecutors from the despair that emanated from the dementors: That was for the accused to feel, not the accusers.
'Sit down,' said Umbridge in her soft, silky voice.
Mrs Cattermole stumbled to the single seat in the middle of the floor beneath the raised platform. The moment she had sat down, chains clinked out of the arms of the chair and bound her there.
'You are Mary Elizabeth Cattermole?' asked Umbridge.
Mrs Cattermole gave a single, shaky nod.
'Married to Reginald Cattermole of the Magical Maintenance Department?'
Mrs Cattermole burst into tears.
'I don’t know where he is, he was supposed to meet me here!' Umbridge ignored her.
'Mother to Maisie, Ellie, and Alfred Cattermole?'
Mrs Cattermole sobbed harder than ever.
'They’re frightened, they think I might not come home—'
'Spare us,' spat Yaxley. 'The brats of Mudbloods do not stir our sympathies.'
Mrs Cattermole’s sobs masked Harry’s footsteps as he made his way carefully toward the steps that led up to the raised platform. The moment he had passed the place where the Patronus cat patrolled, he felt the change in temperature: It was warm and comfortable here. The Patronus, he was sure, was Umbridge’s, and it glowed brightly because she was so happy here, in her element, upholding the twisted laws she had helped to write. Slowly, and very carefully, he edged his way along the platform until he was near Umbridge, Yaxley, Allison and he was behind Tracey. With her nerves probably shot, Harry was worried about making Hermione jump. He thought of casting the Muffliato charm upon Umbridge and Yaxley, but even murmuring the word might cause Tracey alarm, and he might not be able to be precise enough to leave Allison out of the spell. Then Umbridge raised her voice to address Mrs Cattermole, and Harry seized his chance.
'I’m behind you,' he whispered into Tracey’s ear.
As he had expected, she jumped and let out a yelp of surprise, but both Umbridge and Yaxley were concentrating upon Mrs Cattermole, and this went unnoticed by them. It did not go unnoticed however by Allison, who kept her head forward but her eyes shot to look at Tracey with concern.
'Don't worry, I'm getting you out of here,' he whispered as quietly as he could. 'I have to go tell Allison, I'll be right back.'
'A wand was taken from you upon your arrival at the Ministry today, Mrs Cattermole,' Umbridge was saying, 'Eight-and-three-quarter inches, cherry, unicorn-hair core. Do you recognize that description?'
Mrs Cattermole nodded, mopping her eyes on her sleeve.
'Could you please tell us from which witch or wizard you took that wand?'
Harry suceeded in getting behind Allison.
'T—took?' sobbed Mrs Cattermole. 'I didn’t t-take it from anybody. I b-bought it when I was eleven years old. It—it—it—chose me.'
She cried harder than ever, giving Harry another chance, he didn't have to be as cautious though as he knew Allison wouldn't react in surprise.
'We're leaving, when the opportunity arrives I'm getting you and Tracey out,' whispered Harry. 'We'll come back on a less chaotic d—'
Harry was cut off by Umbridge laughing at Mrs Cattermole with a soft girlish laugh that made Harry want to attack her. She leaned forward over the barrier, the better to observe her victim, and something gold swung forward too, and dangled over the void: the locket.
Allison had seen it; she let out a little sound, but Umbridge and Yaxley, still intent upon their prey, were deaf to everything else.
'No,' said Umbridge, 'no, I don’t think so, Mrs Cattermole. Wands only choose witches or wizards. You are not a witch. I have your responses to the questionnaire that was sent to you here—Mafalda, pass them to me.'
Umbridge held out a small hand: She looked so toadlike at that moment that Harry was quite surprised not to see webs between the stubby fingers. Allison’s hands shook slightly. She quickly searched through a pile of documents balanced on the chair beside her, finally withdrawing a sheaf of parchment with Mrs Cattermole’s name on it.
'Here you—oh, what a lovely locket, Dolores,' she said, pointing at the pendant gleaming in the ruffled folds of Umbridge’s blouse.
'What?' snapped Umbridge, glancing down. 'Oh yes—an old family heirloom,' she said, patting the locket lying on her large bosom. 'The S stands for Selwyn...I am related to the Selwyns...Indeed, there are few Pure-blood families to whom I am not related...A pity,' she continued in a louder voice, flicking through Mrs Cattermole’s questionnaire, 'that the same cannot be said for you. "Parents professions: greengrocers."'
Yaxley laughed jeeringly. Below, the fluffy silver cat patrolled up and down, and the dementors stood waiting in the corners.
It was Umbridge’s lie that brought the blood surging into Harry’s brain and obliterated his sense of caution—that the locket she had taken as a bribe from a petty criminal was being used to holster her own Pure-blood credentials. He raised his wand, not even troubling to keep it concealed beneath the Invisibility Cloak, and said, 'Stupefy!'
There was a flash of red light; Umbridge crumpled and her forehead hit the edge of the balustrade: Mrs Cattermole’s papers slid off her lap onto the floor and, down below, the prowling silver cat vanished. Ice-cold air hit them like an oncoming wind: Yaxley, confused, looked around for the source of the trouble and saw Harry’s disembodied hand and wand pointing at him. He tried to draw his own wand, but too late: 'Stupefy!'
Yaxley slid to the ground to lie curled on the flood.
'H-Harry!'
'Tracey, if you think I was going to sit here and let her pretend—'
'No, Harry, Mrs Cattermole!'
Harry whirled around, throwing off the Invisibility Cloak: down below, the dementors had moved out of their corners: they were gliding toward the woman chained to the chair: Whether because the Patronus had vanished or because they sensed that their masters were no longer in control, they seemed to have abandoned restraint. Mrs Cattermole let out a terrible scream of fear as a slimy, scabbed hand grasped her chin and forced her face back.
'EXPECTO PATRONUM!' Harry and Allison said in unison.
The silver stag and doe soared from the tips of both their wands and leaped toward the dementors, which fell back and melted into the dark shadows again. The two Patronus' light combined, making it more powerful and more warming than the cat’s protection, and filed the whole dungeon as they cantered around and around the room. Harry had never seen his Patronus next to Allison's, but he had never seen something that felt so right and looked so beautiful before. He nearly got distracted as to their current situation.
'Get the Horcrux,' Harry told Tracey.
He ran back down the steps, stuffing the Invisibility Cloak back into his bag, and approached Mrs Cattermole.
'You?' she whispered, gazing into his face. 'But—but Reg said you were the one who submitted my name for questioning!'
'Did I?' muttered Harry, tugging at the chains binding her arms. 'Well, I’ve had a change of heart. Diffindo!' nothing happened.
'Ha, he'd never,' snorted Allison, running over.
'Very funny, can I get some help with these chains?'
Without another word Allison whipped around and pointed her wand at Mrs Cattermole's chains, 'Emancipare!'
The chains clinked and withdrew into the arms of the chair. Mrs Cattermole looked just as frightened as before.
'I don’t understand,' she whispered.
'You’re going to leave here with us,' said Harry, pulling her to her feet. 'Tracey, hurry up, we’re surrounded by dementors!'
'I am well aware Harry, but if Umbridge wakes up without the locket she'll put an even larger target on our backs—It needs to be duplicated—Geminio! There...Ok, lets get out of here...'
She was interrupted by Mrs Cattermole who let out a terrified scream. Harry took the scared woman's arm and made her look at him.
'Go home, grab your children, and get out, get out of the country if you’ve got to. Disguise yourselves and run. You’ve seen how it is, you won’t get anything like a fair hearing here.'
Still scared, she managed to nod and Harry let her go.
'Harry,' said Tracey, 'what is your plan for getting out of here with all the dementors outside?'
'Patronuses,' said Harry, pointing his wand at his own: The stag slowed and walked, still gleaming brightly, toward the door. Allison did the same with her doe. 'As many as we can muster; do yours, Tracey.'
'Exp—Expecto patronum,' said Tracey, nerves in her voice. Nothing happened.
'It’s the only charm she ever has trouble with,' Harry told a completely bemused Mrs Cattermole. 'Bit unfortunate, really...Come on, Tracey...'
'Expecto patronum!'
A silver monarch butterfly burst from the end of Tracey’s wand and flew gracefully through the air to join the two deer.
'C’mon,' said Harry, and he led Allison, Tracey, and Mrs Cattermole to the door.
When the Patronuses glided out of the dungeon there were cries of shock from the people waiting outside. Harry looked around: the dementors were falling back on both sides of them, melding into the darkness, scattering before the silver creatures. Harry briefly spot Theodore draw his wand.
'It’s been decided that you should all go home and go into hiding with your families,' Harry told the waiting Muggle-borns, who were dazzled by the light of the Patronuses and still cowering slightly. 'Go abroad if you can. Just get well away from the Ministry. That’s the—er—new official position. Now, if you’ll just follow the Patronuses, you’ll be able to leave from the Atrium.'
'Harry, what is going on? There is something I need to tell you all,' said Theodore as he ran to the group, but he was intersected by Mrs Cattermole.
'Reg!' screamed Mrs Cattermole, and she threw herself into Theodore’s arms. 'Runcorn let me out, he attacked Umbridge and Yaxley, and he’s told all of us to leave the country, I think we’d better do it, Reg, I really do, let’s hurry home and fetch the children and—why are you so wet?'
'Rain,' Theodore managed to say, disengaging himself. 'Harry, we have to go, the Ministry learned there are potential intruders inside the Ministry, something about a hole in Umbridge’s office door. We got very little time to get out before this place locks down—'
They managed to get up the stone steps without being intercepted, but as they approached the lifts Harry started to have misgivings. If they emerged into the Atrium with a silver stag, an otter soaring alongside it, and twenty or so people, half of them accused Muggle-borns, he could not help feeling that they would attract unwanted attention. He had just reached this unwelcome conclusion when the lift clanged to a halt in front of them.
'We need to get out of here,' said Allison, dead serious.
Tracey’s Patronus vanished with a pop as she turned a horror struck face to Harry.
'Harry, what happens if we're trapped in—!'
'We won’t be if we move fast,' said Harry. He addressed the silent group behind them, who were all gawping at him.
'Who’s got wands?'
About half of them raised their hands.
'Okay, all of you who haven’t got wands need to attach yourself to someone who has. We’ll need to be fast before they stop us. Come on.'
They managed to cram themselves into two lifts. Harry and Allison's Patronus stood sentinel before the golden grilles as they shut and the lifts began to rise.
'Level eight,' said the cool witch’s voice, 'Atrium.'
Harry knew at once that they were in trouble. The Atrium was full of people moving from fireplace to fireplace, sealing them off.
'Harry!' whispered Allison. 'We have a problem—?'
'STOP!' Harry thundered, and the powerful voice of Albert Runcorn echoed through the Atrium: The wizards sealing the fireplaces froze. 'Follow me,' he whispered to the group of terrified Muggle-borns, who moved forward in a huddle, shepherded by Theodore, Allison, and Tracey.
'What’s up, Albert?' said the same balding wizard who had followed Harry out of the fireplace earlier. He looked nervous.
'This lot need to leave before you seal the exits,' said Harry with all the authority he could muster.
The group of wizard sin front of him looked at one another. 'We’ve been told to seal all exits and not let anyone—'
'Are you contradicting me?' Harry blustered. 'Would you like me to have you family tree examined, like I had Dirk Cresswell’s?'
'Sorry!' gasped the balding wizard, backing away. 'I didn’t mean nothing, Albert, but I thought...I thought they were in for questioning and...'
'Their blood is pure,' said Harry, and his deep voice echoed impressively through the hall. 'Purer than many of yours. I dare-say. Off you go,' he boomed to the Muggle-borns, who scurried forward into the fireplaces and began to vanish in pairs. The Ministry wizards hung back, some looking confused, others scared and resentful. Then:
'Mary!'
Mrs Cattermole looked over her shoulder. The real Reg Cattermole, no longer feverish but pale and wan, and just come running out of a lift.
'R–Reg?'
She looked from her husband to Theodore, who swore loudly.
The balding wizard gaped, his head turning ludicrously from one Reg Cattermole to the other.
'Hey—what’s going on? What is this?'
'Seal the exit! SEAL IT!'
Yaxley had burst out of another lift and was running toward the group beside the fireplaces into which all of the Muggle-borns but Mrs Cattermole had now vanished. As the balding wizard lifted his wand, Harry raised an enormous fist and punched him, sending him flying through the air.
'He’s been helping Muggle-borns escape, Yaxley!' Harry shouted.
The balding wizard’s colleagues set up an uproar, under cover of which Theodore grabbed Mrs Cattermole, pulled her towards the still-open fireplace and they disappeared. Confused, Yaxley looked from Harry to the punched wizard, while the real Reg Cattermole screamed, 'My Wife! Who was that with my wife? What’s going on?'
Harry saw Yaxley’s head turn, saw an inkling of truth dawn in that brutish face.
'Come on!' Harry shouted at the girls; he seized their hands and they jumped into the fireplace together as Yaxley’s curse sailed over Harry’s head. They spun for a few seconds before shooting up out of a toilet into a cubicle. Harry flung open the door: Theodore was standing there beside the sinks, still wrestling with Mrs Cattermole.
'Reg, I don’t understand—'
'Madam, please, run. I'm not actually Reg!'
There was a noise in the cubicle behind them; Harry looked around: Yaxley had just appeared.
'Theo, NOW!' Harry yelled. He seized Theodore by the hand and wrapped his arm around Allison and Tracey and turned on the spot.
Darkness engulfed them, along with the sensation of compressing hands, but something was wrong...Allison’s hand seemed to be sliding out of his grip...
He wondered whether he was going to suffocate; he could not breathe or see and the only solid things in the world were Ron’s arm and Hermione’s fingers, which were slowly slipping away...
And then he saw the door of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, with its serpent door knocker, but before he could draw breath, there was a scream and a flash of purple light. Allison’s hand was suddenly vicelike upon his hand and everything went dark again.
