Sirius looked slightly disconcerted for a moment, then said, "I'll look for him later, I expect I'll find him upstairs crying his eyes out over my mother's old bloomers or something... Of course, he might have crawled into the airing cupboard and died... But I mustn't get my hopes up.

The ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.

Her round, mascara-streaked face looked back at him out of the rear window. He forced a grin and a wave before lighting another cigarette, and reflecting that Lucy's idea of sympathty compared unfavourably with some of the interrogation techniques they had used at Guantanamo.

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days.

Kill me then,' panted Harry, who felt no fear at all, but only rage and contempt. 'Kill me like you killed him, you coward-' DON'T-' screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the house behind them- 'CALL ME A COWARD!

I've got plenty of money, more money than I ever dreamed I would have. But I am not a billionaire.

It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.