TRAGIC DEMISE OF MINISTRY OF MAGIC WORKER
St Mungo's Hospital promised a full inquiry last night after Ministry of Magic worker Broderick Bode, 49, was discovered dead in his bed, strangled by a pot plant. Healers called to the scene were unable to revive Mr. Bode, who had been inquired in a workplace accident some weeks prior to his death.
Healer Miriam Strout, who was in charge of Mr. Bode's ward at the time of the incident, has been suspended on full pay and was unavailable for comment yesterday, but a spokeswizard for the hospital said in a statement: 'St Mungo's deeply regrets the death of Mr. Bode, whose health was improving steadily prior to his tragic accident. We have strict guidelines on the decorations permitted on our wards, but it appears that Healer Strout, busy over the Christmas period, overlooked the dangers of the plant on Mr. Bode's bedside table. As his speech and mobility improved, Healer Strout encouraged Mr. Bode to look after the plant himself, unaware that it was not an innocent Flitterbloom, but a cutting of Devil's Snare which, when touched by the convalescent Mr. Bode, throttled him instantly. St Mungo's is as yet unable to account for the presence of the plant on the ward and asks any witch or wizard with information to come forward.'

"Bode..." Ron said thoughtfully as the trio read the latest edition of the Daily Prophet at breakfast one morning in late February,"Bode...it rings a bell."

Hermione gasped,"We saw him!" She whispered,"He was in the bed opposite Lockhart's in St Mungo's. We saw the Devil's Snare arrive - the Healer said it was a Christmas present."

"How come we didn't..." Harry swallowed,"We know what it looks like...we could've stopped this from happening."

"It's not our fault!" Ron snapped,"Who gives Devil's Snare as a Christmas present? Whoever sent it to the bloke was to blame. They must be a real prat, why didn't they check what they were buying?"

"I-I don't think it was an accident, Ron." Hermione said shakily,"This was - this was murder...a clever murder, as well...if the plant was sent anonymously, how's anyone ever going to..." Hermione sighed loudly and stood up, shoving the newspaper in her bag.

"Where're you off to?" Ron asked, picking up his fork again.

"To send a letter." Hermione said quickly, swinging her bag over her shoulder,"It...well, I don't know whether...but it's worth trying...and I'm the only one who can."

As she left, Ron grumbled,"I hate it when she does that. Would it kill her to tell us what she's up to for once? I mean, it would only take her ten more seconds..."

"Dunno." Harry stared at the place where Hermione had just been,"I think it's kind of cool."

Ron nearly choked on his bacon.

***********

Harry closed his fingers around the Snitch as he crashed to the ground. He'd done it! He'd caught the Snitch! Gryffindor had beaten Slytherin!

Once the two teams were all on their feet, Malfoy leered at Harry,"Saved Weasley's neck, didn't you? Did you like my lyrics? Weasley was born in a bin, he always lets the Quaffle in! We wanted to write another couple of verses. We were even going to put one in about Granger, but we couldn't find anything that rhymes with fat and ugly."

Harry closed his eyes tightly as he trembled with anger, willing his temper to stay under control.

"Leave it..." Fred said weakly, noticing Harry's anger.

"No, we'll write a separate song about your pet, if we decide she deserves the attention." Malfoy sniggered,"You know what, I reckon we should stick to our old topic. More to talk about, you know? You like all the Weasleys, don't you, Potter? Spend holidays together and everything, don't you? Can't see how you can stand the stink, but I suppose when you've been dragged up by Muggles, even the Wealseys' hovel smells okay."

It took the combined efforts of the entire Gryffindor team to hold Fred and Ron back, whereas it only took Harry and Hermione - who had run down to the pitch as soon as the match was over - to keep George from charging at Malfoy.

"Or perhaps," Malfoy smirked at the tangle of furious red figures that stood before him,"you can remember what your mother's house stank like, Potter, and Weasley's pigsty reminds you of it-"

Harry and George broke free of Hermione's grasp and ran at Malfoy. Harry had completely forgotten there were people watching, and just wanted to cause Malfoy as much pain as possible. With no time to get out his wand, Harry drew back his fist and sank it as hard as he could into Malfoy's stomach.

"Harry! HARRY! NO!" Hermione had charged after them and was trying to no avail to hold Harry back.

"Gerroff!" Harry growled as George swore loudly.

"GEORGE! HARRY! STOP!" Katie Bell shrieked.

Not until Hermione yelled,"Impedimenta!" and he was knocked over backwards did Harry abandon the attempt to punch every inch of Malfoy that he could reach.

Ten minutes later, Harry and George were trudging out of McGonagall's office glumly, cursing Umbridge under their breaths. She had entered the room halfway through their lecture and insisted that the two boys ought to be banned from Quidditch for the rest of their lives, and that Fred should join them in this punishment, just for good measure. McGonagall had, seemingly reluctantly as she had been under a lot of threat from Umbridge, agreed to this.

Once the pair were back in the common room and had broken the news to everyone, Angelina started shouting, but not, surprisingly, at Harry and George.

"Banned! Banned! No Seeker and no Beaters! What on earth does she think she's playing at? Fred's not even done anything! Malfoy had it coming...we should go on strike or something..."

"No. No strike." Harry grumbled, sitting down next to Hermione on the sofa. She was one of the only Gryffindors who wasn't on the Quidditch team that didn't look terrified of him. "You'll just get yourselves banned too. Then we'll have no team. You lot can win the cup without us, we'll be easy enough to to replace." Harry told the team, grimacing.

"That's not true," Hermione put her hand on his knee,"you know it's not. You three aren't replaceable. You're all brilliant. We can't win without you. Besides, Ron wasn't...as good as he thought he'd be."

Ron had not been seen at all since the match ended, but had apparently been in extremely low spirits after the Weasley Is Our King song. The previous week he had insisted on joining to team, so they let him try out for Keeper as Cormac McGlaggen (the temporary Keeper) had been unable to make many of the practices and was willing to let Ron take his place. No one else had come to the last-minute tryout, so Ron got the position. He had been elated, to say the very least, but now he was nowhere to be found.

***********

As February melted into March, Harry began receiving lots of letters from people he did not know. At the first letter, Hermione had grown extremely excited and ran over to the Ravenclaw table. Harry watched her talking to Luna for a minute before she came back, a magazine in her hand.

"Here." She thrust it at Harry. His own face grinned awkwardly back at him.

The Quibbler was made of very smooth and shiny paper, and not many people had heard of it. As the month grew to a close, Harry had received so many letters from well-wishers and ill-wishers alike that he couldn't find anywhere to put them. One afternoon during Quidditch practice, Hermione had gone up to Harry's dorm with him to help open some more of the letters. Settling herself onto Ron's bed, she split the pile of envelopes in half and began to sort through them.

Harry chuckled,"If Ron finds you on his bed, he'll kill you."

"Let him try."

Luckily for the Gryffindors, Ron had decided (with a lot of persuasion from Harry and Hermione) that he was going to stay on the Quidditch team. He said that he could improve during the practices, and he already wanted to help pick the new Seeker and new Beaters. Harry had secretly wanted to do this himself, but Umbridge had banned him and the twins from going to the practices as well as being on the team. McGonagall had drawn the line at not letting them come to the games, which was a relief to Harry because he really wasn't sure what he would do if he wasn't allowed to attend the Quidditch games. He would probably stay in the common room and open more fan mail with Hermione.

One evening, the Gryffindor team happily joined the twins, Harry and Hermione in the common room after Seeker and Beater tryouts, but they had three new members. The first being Andrew Kirke, the second Jack Sloper and the third - with Harry's old Seeker gloves on her hands - Ginny Weasley. Harry almost threw up. The house was doomed for yet another year.

***********

Snape's Occlumency lessons had been coming thick and fast at Harry, who was struggling to cope with them. At first, Hermione had been eager to learn the spell so that she could help train Harry but, as soon as she saw how tired and grumpy all the lessons were making him, she stopped trying to help and settled for regular check-ins on Harry's progress.

It wasn't long before Umbridge had decided to put a stop to the commotion Harry's article in The Quibbler was causing, so she passed another Educational Decree (number twenty-seven, to be exact) that banned students from reading it. For some absurd reason, Hermione had been really rather happy about it.

"What exactly is so great about all of this?" Harry asked her.

"Oh, Harry, don't you see?" Hermione beamed hugely at him,"If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!"

Hermione was right. By the week before Easter, Harry was certain that every student in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff had come up to him and brought up his article, just as his fan mail was starting to die down. This was, of course, far more stressful than reading the letters, but the feeling of supreme elatedness didn't leave Harry for weeks.

"There you are, see?" Hermione whispered to him one evening after a DA meeting,"I knew everything would start sorting itself out eventually."

"Thanks, Hermione. I couldn't have done this without you." Harry said. Hermione laughed. "I'm being serious! I wouldn't have started the DA if it wasn't for you, and I wouldn't be doing these Occlumency things if you weren't making me. Thanks."

"Just doing my job." Hermione put her arm around Harry's shoulders as the pair walked back to the common room.