on all five books!!!

 Warning: In absolutely no case must this text be used for other things than evaluation, fan or inspiration purposes.  I do this only to allow other fans to appreciate the delightful work of JK Rowling and make a full character analysis of one of her creations.  
No money is being made, keep it that way! 

Chapter 30

Then there were the two large broom-shaped holes in Umbridge's office door, through which Fred and George's Cleansweeps had smashed to rejoin their masters. Filch fitted a new door and removed Harry's Firebolt to the dungeons where, it was rumoured, Umbridge had set an armed security troll to guard it. However, her troubles were far from over.

'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 more Occlumency lessons!'

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 what to tell them; he had ended up saying, 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 you were muttering in your sleep again last night.'

'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 he was so intensely curious about what was hidden in that room full of dusty orbs, that he was quite keen for the dreams to continue.

Chapter 31

Their teachers were no longer setting them homework; lessons were devoted to revising those topics the teachers thought most likely to come up in the exams. The purposeful, feverish atmosphere drove nearly everything but the OWLs from Harry's mind, though he did wonder occasionally during Potions lessons whether Lupin had ever told Snape that he must continue giving Harry Occlumency tuition. If he had, then Snape had ignored Lupin as thoroughly as he was now ignoring Harry. This suited Harry very well; he was quite busy and tense enough without extra classes with Snape, and to his relief Hermione was much too preoccupied these days to badger him about Occlumency; she was spending a lot of time muttering to herself, and had not laid out any elf clothes for days.

Meanwhile, Draco Malfoy had found a different way to induce panic.

'Of course, it's not what you know,' he was heard to tell Crabbe and Goyle loudly outside Potions a few days before the exams were to start, 'it's who you know. Now, Father's been friendly with the head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority for years — old Griselda Marchbanks - we've had her round for dinner and everything…'

Once breakfast was over, the fifth- and seventh-years milled around in the Entrance Hall while the other students went off to lessons; then, at half past nine, they were called forwards class by class to re-enter the Great Hall, which had been rearranged exactly as Harry had seen it in the Pensieve when his father, Sirius and Snape had been taking their OWLs;

'Well, it wasn't too bad, was it?' asked Hermione anxiously in the Entrance Hall two hours later, still clutching the exam paper. 'I'm not sure I did myself justice on Cheering Charms, I just ran out of time. Did you put in the counter-charm for hiccoughs? I wasn't, sure whether I ought to, it felt like too much - and on question twenty-three -'

'Hermione,' said Ron sternly, 'we've been through this before… we're not going through every exam afterwards, it's bad enough doing them once.'

Hermione's bad mood persisted for most of the weekend, though Harry and Ron found it quite easy to ignore as they spent most of Saturday and Sunday revising for Potions on Monday, the exam which Harry had been looking forward to least - and which he was sure would be the downfall of his ambitions to become an Auror. Sure enough, he found the written paper difficult, though he thought he might have got full marks on the question about Polyjuice Potion; he could describe its effects accurately, having taken it illegally in his second year.

The afternoon practical was not as dreadful as he had expected it to be. With Snape absent from the proceedings, he found that he was much more relaxed than he usually was while making potions. Neville, who was sitting very near Harry, also looked happier than Harry had ever seen him during a Potions class. When Professor Marchbanks said, 'Step away from your cauldrons, please, the examination is over,' Harry corked his sample flask feeling that he might not have achieved a good grade but he had, with luck, avoided a fail.

Chapter 32

'I'm trying to say - Voldemort knows you, Harry! He took Ginny down into the Chamber of Secrets to lure you there, it's the kind of thing he does, he knows you're the - the sort of person who'd go to Sirius's aid! What if he's just trying to get you into the Department of Myst—?'

'Hermione, it doesn't matter if he's done it to get me there or not - they've taken McGonagall to St Mungo's, there isn't anyone from the Order left at Hogwarts who we can tell, and if we don't go, Sirius is dead!'

'Very well,' she said in her most dangerous and falsely sweet voice. 'Very well, Mr Potter… I offered you the chance to tell me freely. You refused. I have no alternative but to force you. Draco

- fetch Professor Snape.'

Malfoy stowed Harry's wand inside his robes and left the room smirking, but Harry hardly noticed. He had just realised something; he could not believe he had been so stupid as to forget it. He had thought that all the members of the Order, all those who could help him save Sirius, were gone - but he had been wrong. There was still a member of the Order of the Phoenix at Hogwarts

- Snape.

Chapter 35

'Nope, not jesting,' said Harry, his eyes flicking from Death Eater to Death Eater,.looking for a weak link, a space through which they could escape. 'How come Voldemort wants it?'

Several of the Death Eaters let out low hisses.

'You dare speak his name?' whispered Bellatrix.

'Yeah,' said Harry, maintaining his tight grip on the glass ball, expecting another attempt to bewitch it from him. 'Yeah, I've got no problem with saying Vol—'

'Shut your mouth!' Bellatrix shrieked. 'You dare speak his name with your unworthy lips, you dare besmirch it with your half-blood's tongue, you dare -'

Footsteps and shouts echoed from behind the door they had just sealed; Harry put his ear close to the door to listen and heard Lucius Malfoy roar, 'Leave Nott, leave him, I say — his injuries will be nothing to the Dark Lord compared to losing that prophecy. Jugson, come back here, we need to organise! We'll split into pairs and search, and don't forget, be gentle with Potter until we've got the prophecy, you can kill the others if necessary -Bellatrix, Rodolphus, you take the left; Crabbe, Rabastan, go right -Jugson, Dolohov, the door straight ahead - Macnair and Avery, through here - Rookwood, over there - Mulciber, come with me!'

Neville kicked aside the broken fragments of his own wand as they walked slowly towards the door.

'My gran's going do kill be,' said Neville thickly, blood spattering from his nose as he spoke, 'dat was by dad's old wand.'

Chapter 36

Hatred rose in Harry such as he had never known before; he flung himself out from behind the fountain and bellowed, `Crucio!'

Bellatrix screamed: the spell had knocked her off her feet, but she did not writhe and shriek with pain as Neville had - she was already back on her feet, breathless, no longer laughing. Harry dodged behind the golden fountain again. Her counter-spell hit the head of the handsome wizard, which was blown off and landed twenty feet away, gouging long scratches into the wooden floor.

`Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?' she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now. `You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain - to enjoy it - righteous anger won't hurt me for long - I'll show you how it is done, shall I? I'll give you a lesson -'

Harry was edging around the fountain on the other side when she screamed, `Crucio!' and he was forced to duck down again as the centaur's arm, holding its bow, span off and landed with a crash on the floor a short distance from the golden wizard's head.

`Potter, you cannot win against me!' she cried.

He could hear her moving to the right, trying to get a clear shot of him. He backed around the statue away from her, crouching behind the centaur's legs, his head level with the house-elf's.

`I was and am the Dark Lord's most loyal servant. I learned the Dark Arts from him, and I know spells of such power that you, pathetic little boy, can never hope to compete =

`You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?' called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. `Above such brutality, are you?'

'We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom,' Dumbledore said calmly, continuing to walk towards Voldemort as though he had not a fear in the world, as though nothing had happened to interrupt his stroll up the hall. `Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit =

`There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!' snarled Voldemort.

`You are quite wrong,' said Dumbledore, still closing in upon Voldemort and speaking as lightly as though they were discussing the matter over drinks. Harry felt scared to see him walking along, undefended, shieldless; he wanted to cry out a warning, but his headless guard kept shunting him backwards towards the wall, blocking his every attempt to get out from behind it. `Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness

Chapter 37

It was his fault Sirius had died; it was all his fault. If he, Harry, had not been stupid enough to fall for Voldemort's trick, if he had not been so convinced that what he had seen in his dream was real, if he had only opened his mind to the possibility that Voldemort was, as Hermione had said, banking on Harry's love of playing the hero ...

It was unbearable, he would not think about it, he could not stand it ... there was a terrible hollow inside him he did not want to feel or examine, a dark hole where Sirius had been, where Sirius had vanished; he did not want to have to be alonc with that great, silent space, he could not stand it -

`More recently' said Dumbledore, `I became concerned that Voldemort might realise that this connection between you exists. Sure enough, there came a time when you entered so far into his mind and thoughts that he sensed your presence. I am speaking, of course, of the night when you witnessed the attack on Mr Weasley'

`Professor Snape, Harry' Dumbledore corrected him quietly. `But did you not wonder why it was not I who explained this to you? Why I did not teach you Occlumency? Why I had not so much as looked at you for months?'

Harry looked up. He could see now that Dumbledore looked sad and tired.

'Sirius told me you felt Voldemort awake inside you the very night that you had the vision of Arthur Weasley's attack. I knew at once that my worst fears were correct: Voldemort had realised he could use you. In an attempt to arm you against Voldemort's assaults on your mind, I arranged Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape.'

He paused. Harry watched the sunlight, which was sliding slowly across the polished surface of Dumbledore's desk, illuminate a silver ink pot and a handsome scarlet quill. Harry could tell that the portraits all around them were awake and listening raptly to Dumbledore's explanation; he could hear the occasional rustle of robes, the slight clearing of a throat. Phineas Nigellus had still not returned ...

`Professor Snape discovered,' Dumbledore resumed, `that you had been dreaming about the door to the Department of Mysteries for months. Voldemort, of course, had been obsessed with the possibility of hearing the prophecy ever since he regained his body; and as he dwelled on the door, so did you, though you did not know what it meant.

`And then you saw Rockwood, who worked in the Department of Mysteries before his arrest, telling Voldemort what we had known all along -that the prophecies held in the Ministry of Magic are

from the shelves without suffering madness: in this case, either Voldemort himself would have to enter the Ministry of Magic, and risk revealing himself at last - or else you would have to take it for him. It became a matter of even greater urgency that you should master Occlumency'

`But I didn't,' muttered Harry. He said it aloud to try and ease the dead weight of guilt inside him: a confession must surely relieve some of the terrible pressure squeezing his heart. `I didn't practise, I didn't bother, I could've stopped myself having those dreams, Hermione kept telling me to do it, if I had he'd never have been able to show me where to go, and - Sirius wouldn't - Sirius wouldn't =

you gave Professor Snape that cryptic warning, he realised that you had had a vision of Sirius trapped in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries. He, like you, attempted to contact Sirius at once. I should explain that members of the Order of the Phoenix have more reliable methods of communicating than the fire in Dolores Umbridge's office. Professor Snape found that Sirius was alive and safe in Grimmauld Place.

`When, however, you did not return from your trip into the Forest with Dolores Umbridge, Professor Snape grew worried that you still believed Sirius to be a captive of Lord Voldemort's. He alerted certain Order members at once.'

Dumbledore heaved a great sigh and continued, `Alastor Moody, Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Remus Lupin were at Headquarters when he made contact. All agreed to go to your aid at once. Professor Snape requested that Sirius remain behind, as he needed somebody to remain at Headquarters to tell me what had happened, for I was due there at any moment. In the meantime he, Professor Snape, intended to search the Forest for you.

`But Sirius did not wish to remain behind while the others went to search for you. He delegated to Kreacher the task of telling me what had happened. And so it was that when I arrived in Grimmauld Place shortly after they had all left for the Ministry, it was the elf who told me - laughing fit to burst - where Sirius had gone.'

He was on his feet again, furious, ready to fly at Dumbledore, who had plainly not understood Sirius at all, how brave he was, how much he had suffered ...

`What about Snape?' Harry spat. `You're not talking about him, are you? When I told him Voldemort had Sirius he just sneered at me as usual -

`Harry, you know Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take you seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge,' said Dumbledore steadily, `but as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what you had said. It was he who deduced where you had gone when you did not return from the Forest. It was he, too, who gave Professor Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she was attempting to force you to tell her Sirius's whereabouts.'

Harry disregarded this; he felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape, it seemed to be easing his own sense of dreadful guilt, and he wanted to hear Dumbledore agree with him.

`Snape - Snape g - goaded Sirius about staying in the house - he made out Sirius was a coward =

'Sirius was much too old and clever to have allowed such feeble taunts to hurt him,' said Dumbledore.

`Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons!' Harry snarled. `He threw me out of his office!'

`I am aware of it,' said Dumbledore heavily `I have already said that it was a mistake for me not to teach you myself, though I was sure, at the time, that nothing could have been more dangerous than to open your mind even further to Voldemort while in my presence -

`Snape made it worse, my scar always hurt worse after lessons with him = Harry remembered Ron's thoughts on the subject and plunged on `- how do you know he wasn't trying to soften me up for Voldemort, make it easier for him to get inside my =

another old man's mistake - that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father - I was wrong.'

`But that's OK, is it?' yelled Harry, ignoring the scandalised faces and disapproving mutterings of the portraits on the walls. `It's OK for Snape to hate my dad, but it's not OK for Sirius to hate Kreacher?'

'Sirius did not hate Kreacher,' said Dumbledore. `He regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike ... the fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.'

My answer is that my priority was to keep you alive. You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but I realised. Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters - and many of them are almost as terrible as he - were still at large, angry, desperate and violent. And I had to make my decision, too, with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe that Voldemort was gone for ever? No. I knew not whether it would be ten, twenty or fifty years before he returned, but I was sure he would do so, and I was sure, too, knowing him as I have done, that he would not rest until he killed you.

Dumbledore got to his feet and walked past Harry to the black cabinet that stood beside Fawkes's perch. He bent down, slid back a catch and took from inside it the shallow stone basin, carved with runes around the edges, in which Harry had seen his father tormenting Snape.

Chapter 38

`I's'pose Filch is happy, is he?' asked Ron, propping a Chocolate Frog Card featuring Dumbledore against his water jug.

`Not at all,' said Ginny `He's really, really miserable, actually…' She lowered her voice to a whisper. `He keeps saying Umbridge was the best thing that ever happened to Hogwarts…

THE END