Charles Wants to See You

Everyone could tell that Hermione looked terrible. Her face was tense, her brows tightly furrowed, and suppressed fury burned in her eyes.

She strode over to the table beside Harry and Ron, then slammed the schoolbag from her shoulder onto the tabletop. It was usually stuffed to bursting and astonishingly heavy.

Harry and Ron, along with everyone else—even Lavender and Parvati in the distance—instinctively hunched their shoulders and leaned away from the table, waiting for the familiar heavy thud of the bag hitting the tabletop.

But this time, it never came.

The bag landed with an unusually light sound today, like an empty shell.

The abnormality briefly pulled Harry out of his own gloom. He looked at Hermione in confusion.

He had been immersed in his own miserable mood, but Hermione's strange behavior now drew his attention.

Hermione dropped heavily into a chair, her chest rising and falling unevenly. She was clearly furious.

"Madam Pince!" she practically snarled the name. "She just announced that starting tonight, until the end of the year, every book in the library—all of them—will be forbidden from being borrowed. They can only be read in the reading room!"

"She said it was because the library was being upgraded and the shelves needed to be reorganized!"

"Rearranging shelves has always been a matter of waving a wand a few times. They've never practically shut down the library like this!"

She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, but it did little good. She continued indignantly, "I suspect Umbridge is behind this again. She just wants to restrict our access to knowledge!"

The more Hermione spoke, the more agitated she became, and her voice rose considerably, as though she wanted to pour out all the fury in her heart.

There was no doubt that this was