Read Harry Potter 05 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for Free Online

did, but I didn’t use –’ Harry began angrily, but –
    ‘SHUT UP!’ roared Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia in unison.
    ‘Go on, son,’ repeated Uncle Vernon, moustache blowing about furiously.
    ‘All went dark,’ Dudley said hoarsely, shuddering. ‘Everything dark. And then I h-heard … things. Inside m-my head.’
    Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia exchanged looks of utter horror. If their least favourite thing in the world was magic – closely followed by neighbours who cheated more than they did on the hosepipe ban – people who heard voices were definitely in the bottom ten. They obviously thought Dudley was losing his mind.
    ‘What sort of things did you hear, Popkin?’ breathed Aunt Petunia, very white-faced and with tears in her eyes.
    But Dudley seemed incapable of saying. He shuddered again and shook his large blond head, and despite the sense of numb dread that had settled on Harry since the arrival of the first owl, he felt a certain curiosity. Dementors caused a person to relive the worst moments of their life. What would spoiled, pampered, bullying Dudley have been forced to hear?
    ‘How come you fell over, son?’ said Uncle Vernon, in an unnaturally quiet voice, the kind of voice he might adopt at the bedside of a very ill person.
    ‘T-tripped,’ said Dudley shakily. ‘And then –’
    He gestured at his massive chest. Harry understood. Dudley was remembering the clammy cold that filled the lungs as hope and happiness were sucked out of you.
    ‘Horrible,’ croaked Dudley. ‘Cold. Really cold.’
    ‘OK,’ said Uncle Vernon, in a voice of forced calm, while Aunt Petunia laid an anxious hand on Dudley’s forehead to feel his temperature. ‘What happened then, Dudders?’
    ‘Felt … felt … felt … as if … as if …’
    ‘As if you’d never be happy again,’ Harry supplied tonelessly.
    ‘Yes,’ Dudley whispered, still trembling.
    ‘So!’ said Uncle Vernon, voice restored to full and considerable volume as he straightened up. ‘You put some crackpot spell on my son so he’d hear voices and believe he was – was doomed to misery, or something, did you?’
    ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ said Harry, temper and voice both rising. ‘ It wasn’t me! It was a couple of Dementors!’
    ‘A couple of – what’s this codswallop?’
    ‘De – men – tors,’ said Harry slowly and clearly. ‘Two of them.’
    ‘And what the ruddy hell are Dementors?’
    ‘They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban,’ said Aunt Petunia.
    Two seconds of ringing silence followed these words before Aunt Petunia clapped her hand over her mouth as though she had let slip a disgusting swear word. Uncle Vernon was goggling at her. Harry’s brain reeled. Mrs Figg was one thing – but Aunt Petunia ?
    ‘How d’you know that?’ he asked her, astonished.
    Aunt Petunia looked quite appalled with herself. She glanced at Uncle Vernon in fearful apology, then lowered her hand slightly to reveal her horsy teeth.
    ‘I heard – that awful boy – telling her about them – years ago,’ she said jerkily.
    ‘If you mean my mum and dad, why don’t you use their names?’ said Harry loudly, but Aunt Petunia ignored him. She seemed horribly flustered.
    Harry was stunned. Except for one outburst years ago, in the course of which Aunt Petunia had screamed that Harry’s mother had been a freak, he had never heard her mention her sister. He was astounded that she had remembered this scrap of information about the magical world for so long, when she usually put all her energies into pretending it didn’t exist.
    Uncle Vernon opened his mouth, closed it again, opened it once more, shut it, then, apparently struggling to remember how to talk, opened it for a third time and croaked, ‘So – so – they – er – they – er – they actually exist, do they – er – Dementy-whatsits?’ Aunt Petunia nodded. Uncle Vernon looked from Aunt Petunia to Dudley to Harry as if hoping somebody was going to shout