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

fireplace.
    ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE!’ roared Uncle Vernon, pulling great clumps of hair out of his moustache, something he hadn’t been driven to do in a long time. ‘I WILL NOT HAVE OWLS HERE, I WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS, I TELL YOU!’
    But Harry was already pulling a roll of parchment from the owl’s leg. He was so convinced that this letter had to be from Dumbledore, explaining everything – the Dementors, Mrs Figg, what the Ministry was up to, how he, Dumbledore, intended to sort everything out – that for the first time in his life he was disappointed to see Sirius’s handwriting. Ignoring Uncle Vernon’s ongoing rant about owls, and narrowing his eyes against a second cloud of dust as the most recent owl took off back up the chimney, Harry read Sirius’s message.
    Arthur has just told us what’s happened. Don’t leave the house again, whatever you do.
    Harry found this such an inadequate response to everything that had happened tonight that he turned the piece of parchment over, looking for the rest of the letter, but there was nothing else.
    And now his temper was rising again. Wasn’t anybody going to say ‘well done’ for fighting off two Dementors single-handed? Both Mr Weasley and Sirius were acting as though he’d misbehaved, and were saving their tellings-off until they could ascertain how much damage had been done.
    ‘… a peck, I mean, pack of owls shooting in and out of my house. I won’t have it, boy, I won’t –’
    ‘I can’t stop the owls coming,’ Harry snapped, crushing Sirius’s letter in his fist.
    ‘I want the truth about what happened tonight!’ barked Uncle Vernon. ‘If it was Demenders who hurt Dudley, how come you’ve been expelled? You did you-know-what, you’ve admitted it!’
    Harry took a deep, steadying breath. His head was beginning to ache again. He wanted more than anything to get out of the kitchen, and away from the Dursleys.
    ‘I did the Patronus Charm to get rid of the Dementors,’ he said, forcing himself to remain calm. ‘It’s the only thing that works against them.’
    ‘But what were Dementoids doing in Little Whinging?’ said Uncle Vernon in an outraged tone.
    ‘Couldn’t tell you,’ said Harry wearily. ‘No idea.’
    His head was pounding in the glare of the strip-lighting now. His anger was ebbing away. He felt drained, exhausted. The Dursleys were all staring at him.
    ‘It’s you,’ said Uncle Vernon forcefully. ‘It’s got something to do with you, boy, I know it. Why else would they turn up here? Why else would they be down that alleyway? You’ve got to be the only – the only –’ Evidently, he couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘wizard’. ‘The only you-know-what for miles.’
    ‘I don’t know why they were here.’
    But at Uncle Vernon’s words, Harry’s exhausted brain had ground back into action. Why had the Dementors come to Little Whinging? How could it be coincidence that they had arrived in the alleyway where Harry was? Had they been sent? Had the Ministry of Magic lost control of the Dementors? Had they deserted Azkaban and joined Voldemort, as Dumbledore had predicted they would?
    ‘These Demembers guard some weirdo prison?’ asked Uncle Vernon, lumbering along in the wake of Harry’s train of thought.
    ‘Yes,’ said Harry.
    If only his head would stop hurting, if only he could just leave the kitchen and get to his dark bedroom and think …
    ‘Oho! They were coming to arrest you!’ said Uncle Vernon, with the triumphant air of a man reaching an unassailable conclusion. ‘That’s it, isn’t it, boy? You’re on the run from the law!’
    ‘Of course I’m not,’ said Harry, shaking his head as though to scare off a fly, his mind racing now.
    ‘Then why –?’
    ‘He must have sent them,’ said Harry quietly, more to himself than to Uncle Vernon.
    ‘What’s that? Who must have sent them?’
    ‘Lord Voldemort,’ said Harry.
    He registered dimly how strange it was that the Dursleys, who