DOBBY’S WARNING
Supposing he was still alive in another four weeks, what would
happen if he didn’t turn up at Hogwarts? Would someone be sent
to see why he hadn’t come back? Would they be able to make the
Dursleys let him go?
The room was growing dark. Exhausted, stomach rumbling,
mind spinning over the same unanswerable questions, Harry fell
into an uneasy sleep.
He dreamed that he was on show in a zoo, with a card reading
underage wizard attached to his cage. People goggled through
the bars at him as he lay, starving and weak, on a bed of straw. He
saw Dobby’s face in the crowd and shouted out, asking for help,
but Dobby called, “Harry Potter is safe there, sir!” and vanished.
Then the Dursleys appeared and Dudley rattled the bars of the
cage, laughing at him.
“Stop it,” Harry muttered as the rattling pounded in his sore
head. “Leave me alone . . . cut it out . . . I’m trying to sleep. . . .”
He opened his eyes. Moonlight was shining through the bars on
the window. And someone was goggling through the bars at him: a
freckle-faced, red-haired, long-nosed someone.
Ron Weasley was outside Harry’s window.
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