CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
it? — ‘to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great ad-
venture.’ ”
“I always said he was off his rocker,” said Ron, looking quite im-
pressed at how crazy his hero was.
“So what happened to you two?” said Harry.
“Well, I got back all right,” said Hermione. “I brought Ron
round — that took a while — and we were dashing up to the
owlery to contact Dumbledore when we met him in the entrance
hall — he already knew — he just said, ‘Harry’s gone after him,
hasn’t he?’ and hurtled off to the third floor.”
“D’you think he meant you to do it?” said Ron. “Sending you
your fathers cloak and everything?”
“Well,” Hermione exploded, “if he did — I mean to say — that’s
terrible — you could have been killed.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Harry thoughtfully. “He’s a funny man, Dum-
bledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he
knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I
reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead
of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it
was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It’s al-
most like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I
could. . . .”
“Yeah, Dumbledore’s off his rocker, all right,” said Ron proudly.
“Listen, you’ve got to be up for the end-of-year feast tomorrow.
The points are all in and Slytherin won, of course — you missed
the last Quidditch match, we were steamrollered by Ravenclaw
without you — but the food’ll be good.”
At that moment, Madam Pomfrey bustled over.
“You’ve had nearly fifteen minutes, now OUT,” she said firmly.
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