Sure, he'd never got on with Percy nearly as much as the rest of his family and Percy had turned against all the rest of them as well, but he'd lived with the guy. Had Percy ever actually seen him do anything he considered unbalanced or did Percy just believe that he was because the Ministry did?
...
In reality, five years was not actually that long. How could so many people's perceptions of one guy change so many times throughout that time period?
And not for the first time, Harry really wished he could be considered the ordinary, average wizard that he personally believed he was.
But despite everything people had believed about him, not a single one of them had ever believed that. He was fairly certain that Ron and Hermione, even though they didn't treat him any differently from anyone else they knew, didn't consider him ordinary either and they were the ones who knew him best.
But his attention was diverted away from his internal mulling by Ron tapping on his arm while Hermione looked over what they'd written and occasionally scribbled at something with her quill.
"You alright, mate?" Ron asked, with concern.
"Yeah… Yeah, I'm fine," Harry nodded, though it wasn't exactly true and Ron could tell.
"Don't let Percy get you down, Harry," Ron insisted. "I don't think there was a single thing he wrote in that letter that wasn't total crap. You remember what he called Umbridge? A delightful woman? I mean, really? Anyone who can possibly think that about Toad-face has to be completely barmy. I dunno what the heck's going on in Percy's head right now he's just proven how much of an idiot he is in that letter."
Harry chuckled but only slightly. "Yeah, but its not just him, is it Ron? It's not just him by a long shot."
Ron didn't really seem to know what to say to that but Hermione looked up from what she was doing and said, "We know you're right, Harry. We know that you're telling the truth. And one day, everyone else will too. One way or another, they will find out you were right all along and then they will be more than sorry."
"But I don't want them to be sorry. I want them to believe me now so they can help us actually do something," Harry griped. "I don't want to wait until Voldemort storms the Ministry for them to finally understand that I'm not lying." He ignored the flinch that came from Ron when he said the Dark Lord's name.
Hermione sighed. "Well, we'll just have to bear it until we can actually figure out a way of proving it and getting your story out."
Harry sighed and nodded, knowing Hermione was right, but hating it all the same. And he was rather grateful when Ron tried to change the subject by saying, "So, you think the Quidditch pitch will be fixed before our next practice?"
Harry actually laughed properly this time. They hadn't seen what had happened on the pitch but earlier that day Angelina Johnson had come rushing into the common room, looking decidedly unsure whether she should laugh or worry.
"The whole school's talking about it," she had declared to the both of them. "Apparently there was some kind of freak windstorm near the pitch when the Slytherin team were practicing. Many of the players sustained some pretty big bruises and I think Warrington's broom was snapped in half somehow. I saw Malfoy's broom too - it looked more like a mop than a broom with those flattened bristles. Good luck being streamlined on that, Malfoy."
She'd gone on to explain how apparently a large chunk had been torn out of the stands, practically being reduced to rubble in one place. Harry could tell that while she thought it amusing that the Slytherin team, who had been so mocking of them the previous day, had got rather a big comeuppance today, she was clearly worried about whether something similar would happen to them the next time they went out training.
But Harry was quick to point out that it had never happened before and it probably wouldn't happen again.
"You're right, of course," Angelina agreed. "I hope you're right though. We really need things to kick off in our next session."
Ron had winced visibly at this, but Angelina didn't appear to notice. Harry had decided to refrain from comment about it. He knew Ron was blaming himself for everything that had gone wrong in the last session and indeed his nerves had caused him to mess up several times but Harry knew that telling him otherwise would not help. Ron would know he was only saying that out of pity.
Now that Ron had brought the topic up again though, Harry nodded and said, "I reckon so. Things get fixed pretty quickly around here. And when we go back out there we'll nail it. Maybe we should learn how to cast some kind of wind spells in case Malfoy shows up again. Maybe we can make him afraid to come near the pitch because every time he does he gets blown off his feet."
Ron laughed out loud at this. "What a unique way to eliminate the competition. I wish I could have seen his face when he got blown over though. I wish I could have seen all of their faces."
Hermione made some kind of disapproving noise in the back of her throat before she placed her quill down and said, "Well, here's some improvements I've made for you. Soon as you get that done you'll finally be able to get to bed."
"Eh, we've got History of Magic first thing tomorrow. I can always catch up on sleep in that," Ron pointed out, and Harry laughed.
Hermione though, as expected, disapproved again, and opened her mouth to tell the both of them for about the three-hundredth time that they should actually make an effort to listen to the boring Professor Binns when suddenly a hissing, "Psst…" interrupted her before she could start.
"Oi, you three," a familiar voice whispered. "Down here. In the fire."
"Sirius!" Harry blinked the moment he spotted his godfather's head sitting calmly amongst the flames still burning faintly in the hearth next to them. This wasn't the first time that Sirius had contacted him this way. It was a special form of communication that involved Floo Powder.
Sirius had told him that you had to have special access to fireplaces in the Floo Network granted by the Ministry in order to transport your entire body from one fireplace to another but anyone could use this head only way of communicating to any fireplace in the network. That meant that Sirius could talk to them in this manner but could not transport himself directly into the Gryffindor common room in this way.
"What are you doing here?" Harry asked, looking up slightly as if to make extra sure that there was nobody else in the room. His Godfather was, after all, considered a dangerous criminal by most everyone in the Wizarding World even though he had not actually committed the crime.
"Why else would I pop into your fireplace by to talk to you?" Sirius snickered. "I've been appearing for about half a second every hour, hoping you'd stay up when everyone else had gone to bed. Looks like I was lucky. Cramming in all your homework at the weekend last minute when you should be doing it in the week, Harry? Naughty, naughty."
Harry laughed. "Don't tell me you didn't do the same."
"Actually I rarely did my homework on the weekends either," Sirius grinned, and both Ron and Harry snorted at this, while Hermione immediately started fretting about what if someone had actually seen him there when he'd been checking? Which was, admittedly, a valid concern.
But Hermione dropped her protests quite quickly after the conversation started, far more interested in hearing what he actually had to say. Harry's lightning scar, his trademark 'gift' he'd received from Voldemort that fateful night when the Dark Lord had killed his parents and then tried to kill him when he was a baby, had recently hurt when their 'delightful' new teacher, Umbridge, had touched him to look at the back of his hand in her torturous detention.
Harry had written a coded letter to Sirius about it and Sirius was now replying, assuring Harry that he didn't think Umbridge was one of Voldemort's followers - a Death Eater - but agreeing that she was definitely a horrible woman.
...
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