Ron was standing there with his mouth half-open,

clearly stunned and at a loss for anything to say, whilst Hermione looked on the verge of tears.

‘BUT WHY SHOULD I KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON? WHY SHOULD ANYONE BOTHER TO TELL ME WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING?’

‘Harry, we wanted to tell you, we really did—’ Hermione began.

‘CAN'T'VE WANTED TO THAT MUCH, CAN YOU, OR YOU'D HAVE SENT ME AN OWL, BUT DUMBLEDORE MADE YOU SWEAR—’

‘Well, he did—’

‘FOUR WEEKS I'VE BEEN STUCK IN PRIVET DRIVE, NICKING PAPERS OUT OF BINS TO TRY AND FIND OUT WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON—’

‘We wanted to—

‘I SUPPOSE YOU'VE BEEN HAVING A REAL LAUGH, HAVEN'T YOU, ALL HOLED UP HERE TOGETHER—’

‘No, honest—’

‘Harry, we're really sorry!’ said Hermione desperately, her eyes now sparkling with tears. ‘You're absolutely right, Harry— I'd be furious if it was me!’

Harry glared at her, still breathing deeply, then turned away from them again, pacing up and down. Hedwig hooted glumly from the top of the wardrobe. There was a long pause, broken only by the mournful creak of the floorboards below Harry's feet.

‘What is this place, anyway?’ he shot at Ron and Hermione.

‘Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix,’ said Ron at once.

‘Is anyone going to bother telling me what the Order of the Phoenix—?’

‘It's a secret society,’ said Hermione quickly. ‘Dumbledore's in charge, he founded it. It's the people who fought against You-Know-Who last time.’

‘Who's in it?’ said Harry coming to a halt with his hands in his pockets.

‘Quite a few people—’

‘We've met about twenty of them,’ said Ron, ‘but we think there are more.’

Harry glared at them.

‘Well?’ he demanded, looking from one to the other.

‘Er,’ said Ron. ‘Well what?’

‘Voldemort!’ said Harry furiously, and both Ron and Hermione winced. ‘What's happening? What's he up to? Where is he? What are we doing to stop him?’

‘We've told you, the Order don't let us in on their meetings,’ said Hermione nervously. ‘So we don't know the details—but we've got a general idea—’ she added hastily, seeing the look on Harry's face.

‘Fred and George have invented Extendable Ears, see,’ said Ron. ‘They're really useful.’

‘Extendable—?’

‘Ears, yeah. Only we've had to stop using them lately because Mum found out and went berserk. Fred and George had to hide them all to stop Mum binning them. But we got a good bit of use out of them before Mum realised what was going on. We know some of the Order are following known Death Eaters, keeping tabs on them, you know—’

‘—some of them are working on recruiting more people to the Order—’ said Hermione.

‘—and some of them are standing guard over something,’ said Ron. ‘They're always talking about guard duty.’

‘Couldn't have been me, could it?’ said Harry sarcastically.