Two hundred miles away, Harry lay rigidly on his bed, his brows tightly furrowed. He woke from sleep with a muffled groan, one hand clamped over the scar on his forehead. After a long time without hurting, the scar had begun to ache again, far more intensely than before.
He thought what he had just "seen" in his sleep was only a dream, but the memories that surfaced clearly through the pain told him it had not entirely been a dream...
Harry braced one hand against the bed to sit up and fumbled in the darkness with the other, switching on the bedside lamp. Its soft light cast a dim yellow glow over the dark room. Harry found his glasses, and the blurred shapes before him gradually became clear.
The room was frighteningly quiet. Harry leaned against the headboard, frowning deeply as he concentrated and desperately tried to recall the dream-
Of the three people in the room, he recognized only one-because of that cloying, icy voice. He had heard it many times before. It was Voldemort-
He did not recognize either of the other two at all. One was an old man, who later fell to the floor. The other was tall and thin-his name seemed to be-Bar-something. Oh, right, Harry remembered. Barty-
They had killed someone-and were planning to murder others-
What a mess...
At Sirius's insistence, Harry still spent his nights at the Dursley family's house, but he stayed next door all day, in the house Sirius had bought for him.
Since the summer holidays began, he had not exchanged a single word with the Dursley family, except on the day Uncle Vernon picked him up after he got off the train. Uncle Vernon had snarled that he was to stay in the house during the day