The Woes of Mrs. Weasley

• Harry walks out of the courtroom and tells Mr. Weasley he's been cleared of all charges.
• Mr. Weasley is thrilled, and decides to bring Harry back home to tell all of his friends.
• On their way out of the Ministry, they bump into Lucius Malfoy.
• Malfoy is incredibly snide to Harry and Mr. Weasley (as usual).
• Malfoy is there to see the Minister for Magic. His pockets are clinking with gold.
• After Fudge and Malfoy go off together, Mr. Weasley comments angrily, "Malfoy's been giving generously to all sorts of things for years ... gets him in with the right people ... then he can ask favors ... delay laws he doesn't want passed ... oh, he's very well-connected, Lucius Malfoy" (9.32).
• Harry wonders if Malfoy could have put Fudge under the Imperius curse to make him do Voldemort's bidding.

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• Mr. Weasley says, "Dumbledore thinks Fudge is acting of his own accord at the moment — which, as Dumbledore says, is not a lot of comfort" (9.35).
• As Harry walks past the fountain in the front hall, he donates all of the money in his pockets to St. Mungo's as promised.
• Back at the house, Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George, all start dancing around singing, "He got off, he got off, he got off ..." (9.42).
• Everyone congratulates Harry happily.
• The only person who seems at all disappointed in the Wizengamot's decision is Sirius.
• Hermione reckons that, even though Sirius knows it's better for Harry to be going back to Hogwarts, deep down inside, he wanted Harry to stay at Number Twelve. That way, Sirius would have company.
• The day before they're set to go back to school, booklists arrive from Hogwarts.
• But that's not all.
• An envelope comes for Ron.
• Inside is a letter informing Ron that he has been made a prefect — a student who is responsible for the behavior and conduct of other students.
• Fred and George turn to Harry and shout, "We thought you were a cert [...] We thought Dumbledore was bound to pick you!" (9.102-3).
• Hermione runs in, spots the prefect badge, and starts chattering, "I knew it! [...] Me too, Harry, me too!" (9.114).
• Harry has to clarify, "Ron's prefect, not me" (9.117).
• Hermione's jaw drops in surprise.
• Mrs. Weasley is, of course, totally delighted.
• She offers Ron any present he wants for getting the Prefect badge.
• Ron wants a new broomstick.
• Harry is trying to be happy for his friends.
• When he and Hermione are left alone, he says, "Well done, Hermione [...] brilliant. Prefect. Great" (9.165). But even though Harry's doing his best to sound happy for her, he still can't quite manage it.
• Why wasn't he chosen? Harry starts to wonder.
• Even though Harry feels guilty for it, he still thinks about what Fred had said: that "no one in their right mind would make Ron a prefect" (9.181).
• Mrs. Weasley puts up a banner in the kitchen that reads, "CONGRATULATIONS RON AND HERMIONE NEW PREFECTS" (9.194).
• She wants to have a little party to celebrate.
• Moody, Lupin, Tonks, and Kingsley Shacklebot all come.
• Moody turns to Ron and offers these congratulations: "authority figures always attract trouble, but I suppose Dumbledore thinks you can withstand most major jinxes or he wouldn't have appointed you" (9.204).
• Harry feels a bit comforted when he finds out that Sirius and his father got into too much trouble to become prefects themselves.
• Harry circulates around the party.
• He hears Mrs. Weasley scolding Bill for letting his hair get so long. He hears Fred and George bargaining with Mundungus for some Skiving Snackbox ingredients.
• Harry overhears Kingsley Shacklebot asking, "why Dumbledore didn't make Potter a prefect?" (9.240).
• Then, Moody approaches Harry with a picture album.
• It's the original Order of the Phoenix, including Harry's mother and father.
• Moody's picture album really freaks Harry out, since many of the people in those photos have died horribly. He thinks of all those Order of the Phoenix members "waving happily out of the photograph forever more, not knowing they were doomed" (9.268).
• Harry tiptoes up to his room.
• But as he goes upstairs, he hears sobbing.
• Harry walks across the landing.
• He sees a dead body. It's Ron.
• And then the body turns into Bill, then Mr. Weasley, then Fred and George, then Percy, then Harry himself.
• Mrs. Weasley is trying to get rid of the Boggart in the writing desk.
• Boggarts turn into whatever a person most fears, so this Boggart has been turning into dead versions of Mrs. Weasley's family.
• But as Mrs. Weasley tries to use the banishing spell on the Boggart, she's crying too hard at the sight of her dead family members to make it work.
• Harry shouts; Lupin and Sirius come running into the room.
• Lupin gets rid of the Boggart and then tries to comfort Mrs. Weasley.
• She is deeply embarrassed that she couldn't even get rid of a Boggart by herself.
• But she's so worried, all the time. Her whole family is in the Order, and "it'll b - b - be a miracle if we all come through this" (9.299).
• Harry thinks about those pictures of the Order that Moody showed him.
• He realizes that Mrs. Weasley's fears might just come true.
• He feels a sudden sharp pain in his curse scar.
• Harry feels "older than he had ever felt in his life, and it seemed extraordinary to him that barely an hour ago he had been worried about a joke shop and who had got a prefect's badge" (9.311).