Harry looked up at Hermione. She was so pale in the moonlight, he thought she might faint. He
changed back to his human form and caught her just before she fell into a student desk, pulled
out a chair and sat her in it. Her mouth was working soundlessly, and she stared at him with her
brown eyes wide and unbelieving. He started to wonder whether he’d have to slap her or
something to bring her back to her senses.
Finally, she regained the power of speech. “Harry! When--how--when--”
“Take a breath, Hermione,” he told her, trying to be calm enough for both of them, which was a
good trick when his heart was racing and all he could think was that any minute someone would
come along and find Cho, and then they would see him and Hermione in the Charms
classroom...
“We need to get onto the ledge and close the window behind us, Hermione. I’ve looked; it’s a
really wide ledge, practically a balcony. Then I’ll change again and you can ride on my back.
I’m going to see if I can get up to the Astronomy tower. We can get back into the castle from
there.”
“You’re going to see if you can get up to the Astronomy tower? Harry, have you ever actually
done this before?” He smiled; Hermione was back.
“Changing into a golden griffin, yes; flying, no.”
She swallowed. “You’ve never flown before.”
“Not without a broom. Or on a winged animal, like the golden griffin Hagrid had us studying.
And there was the time we did hippogriffs.”
Hermione hit her head with her hand. “Oh! That ride on Buckbeak...” Harry remembered how
she’d hated that.
“You can hold onto my mane with your hands. You won’t fall if you do that and put your legs
around me very tightly,” he said, then suddenly felt himself flush, thinking of her doing what he
was talking about. Hermione didn’t seem to notice; she looked at the open window as though it
was the last place she wanted to go. She looked back toward the door to the room, as though
she envied Cho.
But Harry had climbed up on the window sill and put out his hand to her. “We should go before someone comes.” Hermione nodded and stood shakily, walking toward the window. She put
her foot up on the sill and took his hand, swinging up in a single fluid motion. They closed the
window behind them, shivering on the snowy ledge. He could see that she was trying not to
look down. He could not resist looking down, however. Then, to get his bearings, he looked up
instead; directly over the windows to the Charms classroom was a series of lion gargoyles,
looking very similar to the bookends he’d given her for Christmas. He pointed them out to her.
“A good omen, do you think?”
She looked thoughtful, then turned to him, frowning. “I dropped Divination, remember?” But
then she had to smile, and he returned it.
“Ready?”
She looked apprehensive again, but nodded. He changed once more, then spread his wings; she
swung her leg over his back, sitting behind the strong gossamer appendages. He felt her warm
weight on his back, then her thighs and knees clamping hard on his flanks, her fingers sinking
into his mane. Good, he thought. Hopefully she’ll be safe.
Harry felt the purring motor within his body, felt the animal instinct emanating from his hide, his
tail, his paws on the cold stone. He remembered the golden griffin from class, and thought about
how it had taken flight. Finally, he decided that at the very least, with the wings, they could glide
safely to the ground, even if he couldn’t get more height than they had now. He looked up
toward the Astronomy Tower; several stories up and at the far end of the castle from where
they were it might as well have been miles away. He took a deep breath and leapt off the ledge.
They plummeted.
Hermione screamed; Harry couldn’t seem to do anything with his wings. Finally, after what
seemed a very long time but was probably only a second, he managed to locate the muscles to
move his wings and to control their angle, so he could get lift, so he could get that differential in
the air pressure above and below the wings. He was back at the same level as the Charms
classroom, now a story above that, then a story higher. He was moving forward at the same
time, soaring out over the grounds. He heard Hermione gasp above him, leaning forward,
molding her body to his and lacing her fingers more firmly into his mane, her knees starting to
hurt him from digging into his shoulders.
Now he was really flying, banking over the lake, heading back to the castle, the Astronomy
Tower below them. Harry wanted to go on flying; he’d never felt so free! It wasn’t like using a
broomstick at all. But that would have to be for another time. He’d gotten enough height, that
was the important thing. He descended in tight, spiraling circles, coming closer and closer to the
observation deck, until finally all four paws struck the flat surface which had been swept clear of
snow for the third-year Hufflepuff and Slytherin class earlier that evening.
Once he had landed, Harry changed again immediately; he was almost as exhausted as when he had been blocking the Hara Kiri curse. Immediately, his back protested against having
Hermione sitting on his spine, her legs clamped tightly around his ribcage. Her hands were in his
hair; she removed them hastily, then climbed off him, kneeling by his side. He was still trying to
get his breath.
He rolled over onto his back, smiling up at her. “We did it,” he said weakly.
She was frowning at him, though. Her expression reminded him of when his mum had slapped
Snape in the Potions Dungeon. “Tell me why I shouldn’t hex you and put boils all over your
face right now, Harry Potter? When were you planning to tell me about this?”
He swallowed. “Hermione, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. You didn’t tell anyone about your
Time Turner, remember? I’m almost finished my training, except for learning flying--and I guess
I just got a crash course in that. Without the crashing, fortunately.”
She started to smile a little. “Fortunately,” she agreed.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position; the pain of the transfiguration was hitting him now,
and he wished he could just sink into a hot bath with some of Madam Pomfrey’s fig-leaf pain
reliever...
But they couldn’t afford to think just of themselves right now. Cho was on the floor of the
Charms corridor and they had to get help. “Hermione,” he said, “we have to go back to
Gryffindor Tower. We should get the map so we can see if anyone’s moving around the castle
before we try to go get help. Come on.” He tried to stand then, and fell back to the ground.
Hermione stifled a laugh.
“And you’re telling me to come on? Here--” and she put out her hand. He didn’t take it; instead
he grasped her forearm, and she grasped his, like acrobats in the circus, and she hauled him to
his feet. He put his arm across her shoulders, leaning on her heavily.
“It’s a good thing you’re vertically challenged; just the right height to be a good crutch for me...”
“Hey!” she objected to the reference to her height.
“I said it was a good thing, didn’t I?” She grimaced, helping him down the stairs. “And
anyway,” he went on, “you’re not that much shorter than me. I’m only five-foot nine.”
She didn’t comment. When they reached the bottom, they put on the Invisibility Cloak again
and proceeded to Gryffindor Tower. While they were still under the cloak, he pulled her to him
and kissed her gently. She didn’t let him go afterward, but clutched at him, her head on his
chest. He kissed the top of her head, leaned his cheek on her hair.
“What’s going to happen?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. She lift up the edge of the cloak and said, “Demiguise!” to the
fat lady, who yawned sleepily, and, eyes still shut, opened the portrait hole. Harry saw Ron leap
toward the entrance, then relax when he saw it was her.
“Where’s Harry?” he wanted to know.
“Here,” he said, taking off the cloak. They both climbed in, closing the portrait. Ron looked at
them expectantly.
“Well?” he said finally, looking like he was going to jump out of his skin. Harry and Hermione
looked at each other, frowning.
“You and Hermione weren’t the only ones to get notes,” Harry said. “Cho got one too, and
thought I was trying to make up with her. She waited a while, and then when she decided to go,
she--I’m not sure what happened. She sort of looked shocked. Then she collapsed on the
corridor floor outside the classroom. She was breathing, but unconscious. When Hermione and
I went into the room, it felt like we passed through something, some kind of field in the
doorway, and we could tell that Cho felt it too, when she entered. But it didn’t have a bad effect
on her until she went through it again...The only thing I ever encountered that was like it was
when I was in the maze during the third task. There was this thing I passed through, and it was
like having the Inverso charm put on me. That was why I knew it would be a good one for
dueling; I remembered the feeling of hanging upside-down in the air in the maze. I probably
wasn’t, I was probably on the ground the whole time, but it sure felt--”
“Harry,” Hermione interrupted him. “We need to get help for Cho.”
“Right,” Harry agreed.
“Wait!” Ron stopped him. “If Cho could enter safely, like you, but not leave safely--how did
you two get out? Why didn’t it affect you?”
Harry and Hermione looked at each other, Harry looking guilty.
“Tell him, Harry. Or show him.”
Harry nodded. “Ron, I’ve been getting some--private tutoring from McGonagall. After dinner
every night.”
Ron made a face. “What’s that go to do with--” he started to say, but suddenly, he wasn’t
speaking to Harry; he saw before him a lion, a real lion, fur and claw and tooth and mane and
bright green eyes and wings...
And wings?
“H-Harry!” he stuttered, not even sure whether he should be calling this creature by Harry’s name. Harry reappeared abruptly, and Ron wasn’t sure whether he’d been awake too long and
had hallucinated. He turned uncertainly to Hermione.
“Did--did you just see that too? Am I crazy?”
“No, Ron,” she said, her face serious. “Harry is an Animagus.”
“An Animagus!”
“A golden griffin Animagus, to be precise,” Harry said now. “A good thing, too. Originally, I
was just going to be a lion. But we never could have gotten out of the Charms classroom if I’d
done that.”
Ron was just staring at him, openmouthed. “Then--then how--”
“Flew,” Hermione said simply. “We landed on the observation deck of the Astronomy tower,
then came back down here.”
“Can--can I see it again?”
Harry put his right hand behind his neck and rubbed it. “Could I not? I’m pretty achy. I’d never
flown before...”
“You never flew before?” Ron yelled now. Harry and Hermione hushed him.
“Yes!” Harry yelled in a whisper. “I’d never flown before, and Hermione was riding on my
back...”
Ron looked miffed now, perhaps thinking, as Harry had, about her legs wrapped around him...
“Well,” he said, looking at her levelly. “I’ve picked her up. She’s like a feather.” Hermione
colored, looked away. Harry frowned.
“She wasn’t on your back.”
Ron couldn’t argue with this, and clearly didn’t want to think about Hermione being on Harry’s
back, so he shut up. Harry went to the stairs leading to their dorm; before he went up, he saw
that Ron and Hermione were standing awkwardly near the portrait hole; Hermione was gazing
at the fire, while Ron was gazing at her.
Harry shook himself. Focus, he thought. He retrieved the map from his trunk and hurried back
downstairs, laying the parchment on a table and waving his wand over it while Ron and
Hermione came over to watch.
“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” When the map appeared, they easily found the Charms classroom with the tiny dot right outside
the doorway labeled “Cho Chang.” Then they saw three minuscule dots moving down the
Charms corridor. Two were labeled, “Roger Davis” and “Niamh Quirke” and the third one
was Professor Flitwick.
Harry heaved a sigh of relief. “Look, they’ve come looking for her. That makes sense. Niamh
and Roger are the seventh-year Ravenclaw prefects. He’s Head Boy, sure, but he’s still a
prefect too. And they brought Flitwick, since he’s their head-of-house.”
They nodded. Hermione got a sudden revelatory look on her face. “Oh, Harry! What if the
thing in the doorway isn’t Dark Magic? What if it’s just some kind of--security spell that
Flitwick puts on his classroom?”
“I’ve been in there before at odd hours,” Harry said, not mentioning that it was to snog with
her. “It’s never been there before.”
“Maybe he just recently started doing it.”
“I hope so, because that would mean he knows what happened to Cho, and should be able to
reverse it. But even if Flitwick is the one who charmed the doorway, someone tried to lure you
two and Cho there, probably knowing what would happen to anyone who entered the room,
then tried to leave it. The source of the field may possibly be Flitwick, but I doubt that he sent
the notes.”
Then they noticed that the small Flitwick dot was moving into the classroom. “Maybe he’s
disabling the field,” Hermione speculated, hoping. The Flitwick dot emerged from the classroom
again, then all four dots moved through the corridors, up and down staircases. They watched,
fascinated.
“Do you suppose they revived her? You think she’s all right?” said Ron.
Harry shrugged. Hermione frowned. “No,” she said. “They’re taking her to the hospital wing.”
They watched the four dots enter the hospital wing after traveling together for a few minutes.
They saw the Madam Pomfrey dot flitting back and forth, tending to Cho, whose dot moved to
the vicinity of the beds. Madam Pomfrey moved back and forth between Flitwick and Cho, and
then Flitwick also moved to the bed area. Harry assumed he was checking on Cho before
leaving. But his dot stayed there; only Roger’s and Niamh’s dots left the hospital wing.
“What’s going on?” Harry asked no one in particular. “Flitwick is still there!”
Hermione bit her lip. “Maybe he didn’t put that field in the doorway to his classroom. Maybe it
got him too...” All three of them looked at each other in alarm. A teacher was hurt now. Funny little Professor
Flitwick, young Will’s great uncle. Flitwick who didn’t even scold Neville for repeatedly flying
him across the classroom...Probably the nicest professor they had. Sprout was nice too, of
course, and Hagrid was their friend. But Flitwick didn’t make them mess around with
bubotubers or Blast-Ended Skrewts. He’d positively gushed about Harry’s summoning charm
during the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. He’d also congratulated Harry on being
captain of the Dueling Club, and he’d been a champion dueler in his youth. Harry didn’t think it
was possible to feel worse than when he had first heard from Sirius about how bad the tube
station explosion had been, but now he found that he was wrong. This was different; he knew
Professor Flitwick.
Had Voldemort expected Harry to somehow find him and throw himself on his mercy after the
Underground blew up? Is that why he was coming after his friends now? But he doubted that
Voldemort himself had entered Hogwarts. Someone here was doing his bidding. Perhaps
someone who had recently received the Dark Mark...
“There’s nothing we can do right now,” he said firmly. “Cho and Flitwick are with Madam
Pomfrey. She’ll take care of them. We’ll talk to Dumbledore tomorrow, tell him what we saw in
the Charms classroom. I doubt anyone else will be going in there tonight. In the morning, we can
stop by before going running and close and lock the door, put a sign on it about Professor
Flitwick being sick, so no one will try to go in. We’re probably the first ones up everyday,
except for the house elves, so that should do the trick.” He looked at Ron and Hermione now,
at how tired they were, how scared. “We should all get some rest. This whole thing came as a
surprise. We tried to deal with it--but obviously we didn’t know what we were up against.” He
didn’t say it aloud, but he wished he had gone to Snape when Ron and Hermione had told him
about the notes. He would have known the right thing to do, Harry felt sure. Or what not to do,
at any rate. Surely they hadn’t.
He waved his wand over the map, saying dispiritedly, “Mischief managed.” Someone had
managed some mischief, thought Harry. And he felt sure that more was coming.
* * * * *
Professor McGonagall was waiting for him in the hall outside the common room when he and
Hermione came down to run the next morning.
“Potter!” she said simply, looking very stern. “Come with me.” He looked over his shoulder at
Hermione, who was frowning. She went down the staircase they usually took to get to the Great
Hall; he followed McGonagall to her office, her stiff, straight shoulders looking uncompromising
and forbidding.
When he was sitting before her desk, she fixed him with a cold eye, and he shivered. “Harry,”
she said, using his first name for the first time in a very long time (he could probably count the
times on one hand), “I’m very disappointed in you. You’re a prefect, you’re doing so well in the Dueling Club and in your Animagus Training. Then your girlfriend breaks up with you, and you
do something like this...”
Harry frowned. “What? Something like what? What are you talking about?” Had Cho Chang
died? Had Flitwick? No, he decided; she wouldn’t be sitting in her office with him, calling him
Harry if she were accusing him of murder. But she was certainly accusing him of something.
“How did you know about her breaking up with me?” he asked quietly. She gave him that look
Sirius had given him when he tried to make him think he and Hermione had been sleeping in
separate beds.
“Practically everyone in the school who was in Hogsmeade yesterday knows about it, and the
rest know about it from those who were there. Word travels fast around here.”
Especially word about Harry Potter, he thought bitterly. Some people probably couldn’t wait to
gloat about him being dumped, not having any idea he’d been trying to get dumped for months.
“I still don’t understand--”
“Cho Chang was found last night in the corridor outside the Charms classroom. Her roommates
told Davies that she’d received a note from you, asking her to meet you in the Charms
classroom at midnight. They saw your snowy owl deliver it. When she hadn’t returned and it
was after one in the morning, Niamh Quirke convinced Davies and Professor Flitwick that they
should go looking for her. They found her unconscious; no rejuvenation spell they tried worked
at reviving her. Professor Flitwick went into the classroom to see whether anyone was there,
then left the room, and when he passed through the door again, he was stricken in the same way
as Chang, and has also been unconscious ever since. Davies and Quirke took them to the
infirmary, and it is my understanding that Madam Pomfrey has still been unable to reverse the
effect of--of whatever it was you did to them.”
“Whatever I did?” Harry tried not to yell, but it was difficult in the face of such an accusation.
“Davies and Quirke determined that whatever happened to them, it had something to do with
passing into the classroom and then out of it again. They closed and sealed the door, to protect
others. Charms classes are of course canceled until further notice. What do you have to say for
yourself, Potter?”
He was back to being Potter. He didn’t know whether that was good or bad. “Can I ask you
something, Professor McGonagall?”
“What?”
“Have I ever before made you think I would do such a thing?”
Her face softened toward him momentarily. “No,” she had to admit.
“Well, I didn’t do this. Can we--can we meet with Professor Dumbledore and Professor
Snape? Then I can explain everything to you.”
“Why Professor Snape?”
“Well--we’re getting along better these days. Sort of. I just think it would be a good idea.”
She lit the fire in the grate and threw in some powder from a bowl on the mantel, saying,
“Severus Snape.” It took about a minute before Snape’s face finally appeared in the fire, his
eyes not quite opened, squinting up at McGonagall.
“What? Why are you pestering me at this hour on a Sunday?” he said testily.
She ignored his tone. “Severus, please come to the headmaster’s office immediately. I am
bringing Harry Potter.”
Snape’s eyes were open wider now; he noticed Harry sitting in the chair before her desk.
“Potter? What’s he done now?”
“You will find out,” was all she would tell him. The call was abruptly terminated. Snape’s face
disappeared. She extinguished the fire and marched Harry into the corridor. As they walked to
Dumbledore’s office, Harry decided to casually strike up conversation.
“How’s Rita? I guess it’s a good thing Dumbledore asked her to work for him, since she was
able to get the samples from the Krums...”
“Yes, it was. She’s actually more useful than I would have--” Then she stopped and stared at
him. “How did you know--”
“You can trust me, Professor McGonagall. Really. And you know about--my godfather, don’t
you?” She looked back at him appraisingly, nodding. “And you know who really betrayed my
parents?” She nodded again. He breathed a sigh of relief. They resumed walking. He could feel
her eyes on him as they approached the gargoyle that guarded Dumbledore’s office.
“Chocolate-coated pumpkin pasty,” she said to the gargoyle. The wall opened and they went
up the moving spiral stairs to Dumbledore’s office. He was waiting for them; a few minutes after
they had entered, Snape arrived.
“Well,” Dumbledore began cheerfully. “I don’t think we’ve all been in the same room at the
same time this year except to eat meals! And yet--we probably should have had a meeting
before this. Pity it has to be now. Harry? Can you tell us anything about last night?”
Harry swallowed. Dumbledore didn’t think he had anything to do with what happened to Cho
and Flitwick, did he? “After my--my training, I--”
“Training?” Snape spat. “What training?”
Dumbledore looked at McGonagall. “He’s almost done, isn’t he Minerva? Surely another
teacher can know now, particularly Severus.”
She nodded, then turned to Snape. “Harry has been receiving Animagus training from me. It’s
been--what, Harry? About five months?--and he’s almost done. Albus and I have talked to the
Ministry of Magic about delaying his registration until he graduates, for his own safety. You
understand why we didn’t mention this before?”
Snape nodded reluctantly, looking at Harry. “I’m sorry I’m interrupted. Go on,” he said to
Harry grumpily; he looked even more upset than Hermione that he hadn’t known. So much for
building trust, Harry thought.
“Well, when I got back upstairs, I found out that someone had used Hedwig to deliver notes to
Ron and Hermione asking them to meet me in the Charms classroom at midnight.” He
described to them the different theories they came up with, and the plan for Ron to guard the
portrait hole while he and Hermione waited in the classroom in the Invisibility Cloak.
“Harry,” said Dumbledore gently. “You could have come to me or Professor McGonagall or
Professor Snape for help. You didn’t have to do this yourself.”
Harry grimaced. “I thought of that later. I’m sorry. I need to remember to--to rely on others
more.” Most headmasters, he thought, would have told him that he should have come to them,
not he could have. He felt worse than ever.
He described how surprised they were when Cho showed up, that he hadn’t known she’d
received a note, the way she’d passed out through the doorway again and then fallen over,
unconscious.
“How did you get out of the room, then?” Snape genuinely sounded like he wanted to know,
through his surliness. He hemmed and hawed, then gave in.
“Don’t be mad, Professor McGonagall, Professor Dumbledore. I didn’t want whatever
happened to Cho to happen to me or Hermione. I--I had to show her my--my Animagus form.
So we could use the window to get out.” He looked at Professor McGonagall with a smile
now. “I flew us out of there and up to the Astronomy Tower. It was--amazing to fly like that...”
McGonagall was actually smiling now. “You did it? You flew? On the first try?”
“Well--” Harry said reluctantly. “Actually, I fell, at first. But I recovered in time.”
“Flew?” Snape spat. “And you were able to carry a fifteen-year-old girl? What are you, a sea
eagle?”
Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled at Harry. “Show him, Harry.”
Well, it was an order from the headmaster. So Harry stood and pushed his chair out of the way.
He was getting very fast at the change. In a matter of seconds, he felt his paws land on the floor,
felt his tail swishing, the mane around his face, the motor inside him pulsing insistently, a dull
ache through all his bones.
“A lion?” Snape said, confused. “But you said you flew...”
So Harry spread his wings, turning his head to see them; the early morning light coming in
Dumbledore’s windows made iridescent colors appear in the window-pane-like segments. He
looked up at Snape, satisfied to see him speechless.
He changed back into his human form, looking at them all. He sat in his chair again, stiffly, his
joints aching. He didn’t go on; he didn’t feel like revealing the existence of the map to Professor
McGonagall. Snape knew about the map already, but he wasn’t sure about Dumbledore. He
didn’t want to risk losing his map. He was lucky he’d gotten it back from Lupin, in third year,
and from Crouch, when he was masquerading as Moody. It was too useful to lose. These were
allies, but still--
“So, you returned to Gryffindor Tower and went to bed, leaving that poor girl in the corridor?”
McGonagall said accusingly.
“No; I took Hermione back and went to the Charms corridor in the cloak,” he lied. “I saw
Roger and Niamh and Flitwick were coming, so I left; I figured they would take her to the
hospital wing. I had no idea Professor Flitwick would wind up in the infirmary too...I’m sorry I
had to show someone that I’m an Animagus.”
McGonagall looked at him shrewdly. “You didn’t show anyone else, did you?”
“No,” he lied, thinking of Ron and Neville. Neville was accidental, but Ron wasn’t. He was just
tired of having secrets from him, and Hermione knew now. It was getting too tiring keeping
track of who knew what.
“Well,” she said, as though relieved. “I’m glad you did that instead of something stupid like
trying to levitate yourselves down. You probably would have wound up a mile over the
castle...”
“I know it’s hard to control that spell. It’s not exactly my favorite. Although, it is one of
Hermione’s. I’m surprised she didn’t suggest it.”
“Hmmph! Miss Granger knows as well as you do that it is unpredictable when applied to
humans. The usual result is the person shooting straight up into the air with no control
whatsoever...”
“Now, now, Minerva,” Dumbledore broke in. “We’ve established that Harry did the right thing.
The questions we are faced with now are, who cursed the doorway of the Charms classroom?
Who used Harry’s owl to send his friends notes that seemed to be from him? And why?”
They all looked around at each other, at a loss. Harry was about to say something, only about
twenty times, but lost his nerve each time. The silence stretched, until finally, Dumbledore said,
“Well. We’ll all think about that. I won’t assume as yet that anyone has managed to get into the
castle from the outside. Of course, that would mean a student or teacher has done this. Also not
a pleasant thought.”
McGonagall nodded, as did Snape. Harry grimaced. Dumbledore stood. “Sorry to cut short
your morning run, Harry. Go down now, while you still have a little time before breakfast. I have
something else to discuss with Professors Snape and McGonagall.” Harry nodded and left,
wondering what that could be about. Maybe it was just school business.
He went down to the Great Hall and found Hermione sitting at the Gryffindor table, looking
down at her hands. He sat next to her, put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t look at him.
“Hermione? Have you done any running yet?”
She shook her head, still not looking at him. Finally, she spoke. “It’s all my fault. Cho. I should
have nixed the whole idea from the start. We never should have involved her. I’m not--not
especially fond of her, but she doesn’t deserve this...” She swallowed; he could see how eaten
up she was. Hermione was too principled not to feel responsible about something like this.
“No,” he said. “It was my stupid idea. Don’t blame yourself. I’m--I’m not feeling particularly
like running today. What I really want to do is--”
“What?”
He drew his lips into a line. “Find Draco Malfoy and bash in his skull. No magic involved. Just
lots of hitting and blood and real pain. No illusions.” His voice was hard; she looked at him, her
eyes a little scared. He knew he didn’t usually talk like this; he felt changed somehow, after the
last several weeks, after the Westminster tube station and now the trap in the Charms
classroom. He didn’t feel like the same person anymore.
They sat in silence, staring in opposite directions, not touching. After they’d been sitting like that
for a very long time, Harry heard a step near the entrance to the hall. He turned his head
quickly; the thin, pale figure stood in the doorway, elegant black school robes with a silver
prefect badge over a crisp white shirt and black trousers, as though he were ready for
inspection, his fine pale hair still slightly damp from being washed, his eyes empty and scared.
Scared? Harry thought. He’d better be scared. Of me.
Draco Malfoy strode over to them, starting to speak when he was about ten feet away. “Potter.
We have to talk.”Hermione looked like she felt at a disadvantage, wearing her running clothes, even though at this
time of year it wasn’t revealing; she had a sweatshirt and sweatpants on with a terry cloth
sweatband holding her hair off her face. Harry somehow felt it was to his advantage that he was
wearing his sweats and a sleeveless T-shirt; Malfoy looked at his bare arms as if wondering
what Harry could do if he were hacked off enough, perhaps remembering the incident on the
train.
“So. Talk.” Harry was terse, cold.
“Not here...”
“All right,” Harry said, standing. He walked over to the anteroom where he had Animagus
training, Hermione and Malfoy following. When they reached the door, Harry opened it and
waved the other two through. Malfoy made a face at Hermione.
“Get out, Granger. This is between me and Potter.”
“Hermione knows everything, Malfoy. She stays. Ron knows too, by the way.”
Malfoy did the impossible and turned even paler than usual. “Everything?”
“Well--not everything. He knows about Christmas night.” They were all in the room now, and
Harry closed the door.
Malfoy gave a sigh of relief, but still eyed Hermione suspiciously. “Why’d you tell them?”
“I’m the one asking the questions this time, Malfoy. Why did you use my owl to send those
notes to Ron and Hermione and Cho? What did you do to the doorway of the Charms
classroom?”
Malfoy swallowed. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I didn’t know about any bloody notes, but I know now that something was done to the
Charms classroom doorway and I don’t bloody know who did that either!” he shouted at
Harry, sounding very frightened. Not knowing suddenly seemed much more frightening to
Malfoy than any physical pain his father might be able to inflict upon him.
He went on. “Snape called all of the Slytherins into our common room a few minutes ago. He
said all of the heads-of-house were doing the same thing--except for Flitwick. Dumbledore was
handling Ravenclaw. Snape said that Cho Chang and Professor Flitwick were in the hospital
wing, unconscious, because someone had put a curse on the doorway to the Charms
classroom. He said that whoever did it would most likely be expelled; it had all the appearances of Dark Magic.”
He paused, having been speaking very fast, very nervously. He looked at Harry now. “You said
something about notes; Snape didn’t mention anything about notes.”
“Last night, someone went up to the Owlery and used Hedwig to send notes to Cho, Ron and
Hermione asking them to come to the Charms classroom at midnight to talk to me. The notes
looked completely genuine, as though I’d written them myself. Ron and Hermione asked me
why the Charms classroom, why midnight, and I told them I hadn’t sent the notes. We didn’t
realize Cho had received one. Evidently, there is some kind of field that someone has put on the
doorway of the classroom so that you can pass into the room, but when you leave, it knocks
you out. At least, I think it just knocks you out. Cho and Flitwick are in comas, and Pomfrey
hasn’t been able to bring them around. They’re still alive, but no one can wake them up.”
Malfoy paced, running his hand through his hair. “I cannot believe this...”
“What can’t you believe?”
He looked at Harry and Hermione as though deciding how much to tell them. “I wrote to my
dad, told him about Moody seeing the Mark. I did something stupid; I asked him how he could
let me get the Mark when that ex-Auror with that damn eye is working here.”
Harry remembered when he’d been out in the middle of the night the year before, taking his
Triwizard clue, the large golden egg, to the prefects’ bathroom. He’d wound up with his leg
stuck in a trick step, under his Invisibility Cloak, while Filch and Snape and Crouch (looking like
Moody) stood around arguing about the egg he’d dropped. Crouch had looked at Snape’s left
forearm, covered by his nightshirt, and said, “There are some spots that don’t come off.” At the
time, Snape had looked afraid of someone he thought was an ex-Auror who seemed to doubt
whether he had really changed sides. After Snape and Filch had gone, and Crouch had helped
Harry remove his leg from the step, he had said, “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a Death Eater
who walked free.” Harry later realized that he’d meant a Death Eater who didn’t go to jail, as
he had, showing complete loyalty to Voldemort, but who had turned around and given evidence
against other Death Eaters. People like Snape and Karkaroff, who had made deals. Perhaps
especially Snape, the one who had recruited Crouch when he was still in school...
Harry looked at Malfoy. “What did he say?”
“He said that if I was too incompetent to keep Moody from seeing my Mark, he would find
someone else to do the work he had expected me to do, and that the Dark Lord would be very
disappointed in me. Then I started getting these owls from someone here at Hogwarts; they
were school owls, different one each time. The notes that were sent asked me to get some
samples of your writing. So I did; I took some old homework out of your bag when you
weren’t paying attention in Hagrid’s class. Potions requires too much vigilance to avoid the
cauldron going wrong. You really ought to watch your stuff more carefully, Potter.”
“Obviously.”
Hermione spoke for the first time. “Who sent you the owls?” she wanted to know, sounding
impatient.
“How the hell should I know?” he shouted at her, still pacing. Harry felt like knocking him down
and kneeling on his stomach, starting to rain down blows upon him...
“Whoever it is, I don’t think they’re in Slytherin. The other Slytherins were looking pretty
surprised when I got mail from a school owl at breakfast, every time it happened. None of them
are smart enough or good enough at acting to pull that off convincingly. Hufflepuffs are unlikely,
I suppose, but I wonder sometimes whether that’s a red herring--haven’t any Dark Wizards
evercome from Hufflepuff? There has to be someone; even Ravenclaw and Gryffindor have
produced them.”
“Not as many as Slytherin house,” Harry said tensely, still restraining himself.
“Yeah, yeah. House fight for some other time, Potter. This is important. I’m in as much danger
as you now, you know.”
“My heart bleeds. I’m still not convinced that you’re not making all of this up. Maybe if you
could give me some idea of who it might be...”
“The only lead I have is--I think it’s a prefect.”
Hermione looked very alert now. “Why?”
Malfoy drew his lips into a line. “I always sit in the same place for the prefects’ meetings. Last
time, a piece of parchment belonging to you that I had sent back with one of the school owls
was on my desk after the meeting. I didn’t even see how it got there. Someone at the meeting
managed to do it. In a bit of space where there wasn’t already writing, they’d written,
‘THANKS.’”
“What did the handwriting look like?” Hermione wanted to know. Malfoy reached into the
pocket of his robes.
“Take a look.”
Harry and Hermione examined it; it wasn’t very helpful. Just large block letters. Not really
handwriting at all. Harry recognized a corner of his Hamlet essay.
“It’s possible that whichever prefect it was did it because someone else asked them to. It
doesn’t mean our other junior Death Eater is a prefect,” Hermione pointed out. Harry was a
little annoyed with her.
“Just because someone is a prefect doesn’t make them beyond reproach, Hermione.”
“And that includes Head Boys and Head Girls,” agreed Malfoy, surprising Harry. “Potter--that
Head Girl, Spinnet, from your house. Do you think she’s okay?”
“You mean do I think she could be a Death Eater? I dunno, Malfoy--do you think Voldemort’s
recruiting Muggle-born witches now?”
“Oh. She’s Muggle-born? And she duels like that? The three of us and Ginny are the only ones
who were able to beat her.”
Hermione drew herself up to her full five-foot-three inches and glared at Malfoy. “I’m Muggleborn,
Malfoy. Remember dueling with me?” she said softly, dangerously. He backed up a step.
“I just mean--are you sure she’s Muggle-born? Couldn’t she just say that to throw people off?”
“Well, let’s see,” said Hermione, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Her parents raise
thoroughbred race horses in Devon and she was going to train to be an Olympic equestrienne
until she got her Hogwarts letter, so yes, Malfoy, I’m fairly certain her parents are Muggles.
Katie Bell and Angelina Johnson have visited her on holiday. She’s legitimate Muggle-born.”
Malfoy looked thoughtful, smiling. “Spinnet, riding a horse...there’s an image...”
Harry glared at him. “I’ll tell you-know-who...”
“You’ll tell the Dark Lord I said that about Spinnet?”
“I call him Voldemort. You know who I’m talking about.”
He made a face. “Well, if I weren’t trying to be so damn good when I’m with her, my mind
wouldn’t be wandering like this...”
Harry shook his head. “First Parvati, now Alicia...”
Hermione was baffled. “What about Parvati? Who are you talking about?”
Harry looked at her. “I thought you said you’d guessed who Ginny was going to meet.”
Hermione sighed. “Oh, is that all you’re talking about. You’d better be good when you’re with
her, Malfoy. She won’t be fifteen until April.”
“And you’ll keep on behaving yourself even after her birthday, if you know what’s good for
you,” Harry warned. Hermione looked at him strangely when he said this.
“All right, all right. Enough about my private, er, thoughts. What about Head Boy? Is Davies all right?” Harry’s and Hermione’s faces fell. They looked at each other nervously. Malfoy looked
back and forth between them. “What? What? Oh, come on.”
“It’s just that--” Hermione began.
“He’s so--” Harry ventured.
“I don’t know how to put it--”
“All right, all right!” Malfoy interrupted. “So. You don’t trust him. You don’t know why, but
you don’t trust him. Does that about sum it up?” They both nodded.
Then Harry thought of something. “When he and Niamh and Flitwick went looking for Cho,
Roger didn’t go into the classroom...”
“Yes, but Niamh didn’t go in either. I trust her,” Hermione said.
Malfoy narrowed his eyes. “Why do you trust her?”
Hermione made a face. “I just do. I don’t know...”
“And how do you know what Davies and Quirke did?” Harry glanced at Hermione, who
looked like she was biting her tongue. Harry saw an expression of understanding dawning on
Malfoy’s face. “Oh--were you using that parchment thing again? To track their movements.
Wish to hell I had one of those things...”
“Keep wishing, Malfoy. It’s not going to happen. And even without that, we could have figured
it out; I mean, Roger and Niamh aren’t in the hospital wing like Cho and Flitwick, are they?”
Malfoy nodded. “Well, you want to know a reason why I don’t trust Davies?” They looked at
him expectantly. “Who do you think really should have been Head Boy this year?”
Harry and Hermione thought hard. “Well,” Harry said, “Not Fred or George. They weren’t
prefects already, anyway.”
“And none of the Slytherins. No offense. I’m sure there have been Slytherin Head Boys, but--”
Hermione contributed.
Malfoy sighed deeply. “You two are so thick. Diggory! He was the golden boy, the front
runner! But since he was killed by the Dark Lord, that opened the way for Davies! Don’t you
see? Davies is in his debt...”
Harry’s eyes opened wide. “Yes! But the question is--just because he technically owes being
Head Boy to Voldemort killing Cedric, does that necessarily mean that he would feel obliged to
pay that debt?”
Malfoy shrugged. “That’s all I have to go on. I’m clean out of ideas now.”
Hermione had been looking fiercely at the fireplace. “But whoever this person is who sent the
notes, they didn’t do a very good job, did they? I mean, they were also trying to lure me and
Ron to the Charms classroom, and we didn’t fall for it. Couldn’t you write to your father and
ask for another chance, point out how this person failed?”
Malfoy thought about this. “Trouble is--I wouldn’t know about the other notes unless I’d been
talking to you. And then he’d know I’d been talking to you; that’s no good. I’d be in even
worse trouble.”
Harry was the one pacing now, scowling. “We have to come up with a way to communicate
with you. Maybe I can send you a school owl; the Slytherins have already gotten used to seeing
you get stuff from them...”
Malfoy shook his head. “No, you prat. Whoever’s really been sending them will see if I start
getting school owls from someone else. Don’t be stupid.”
Harry fought the urge to respond. The three of them were silent, brooding. They heard a sound
of footsteps in the Great Hall, indicating that some students were starting to come in for
breakfast. Hermione went to the door and opened it a crack. She waved the boys over.
“Not that many people yet. If we’re careful, no one will notice us coming out of here.”
She went first, then Harry. Malfoy hung back. Harry tried to get him to come, but he said, “In a
while. Give anybody time who saw you two come out of here to forget about it.” Harry
nodded. He and Hermione went to sit down at the Gryffindor table. It seemed a long time later
that Malfoy came strolling out of the door casually, went to the Slytherin table and sat down.
Harry glanced around the hall. Had anyone seen? Then he found that he was face to face with
Ginny. He hadn’t even noticed he’d sat down next to her. She was frowning at him.
“Harry, were you and Hermione talking to Draco?” she whispered. “What are you doing to him
now?” she accused. Harry faced Hermione across the table, talking to Ginny out of the corner
of his mouth, very softly.
“It wasn’t about you. Prefect stuff. Don’t worry about it.”
But while they were eating, Ginny kept throwing him looks as if she wasn’t sure what she could
believe. She wasn’t the only one throwing him funny looks; the entire school seemed to be
aware of the “fact” that on the night that Cho Chang broke up with Harry Potter, he tricked her
into going to the Charms classroom at midnight and ambushed her with a curse that had put her,
and then the beloved Professor Flitwick, into a coma.
The heads of house hadn’t said that Harry had done it; they’d said that no one knew. But the word had spread from Cho’s Ravenclaw roommates that she’d gotten the note from Harry and
had assumed that he wanted to apologize and make up. No amount of naysaying from the
teachers was adequate to quash the rumors about what Harry had done in a fit of pique after
Cho had dumped him so publicly. Even the other Gryffindors were giving him funny looks.
Harry squirmed and tried to finish his breakfast as quickly as possible without looking too guilty.
It was worse than second year, when everyone thought he was the heir of Slytherin. But he
wasn’t guilty of anything then, except being a Parselmouth. And now he did feel a bit
responsible for what had happened to Cho, for involving her in the Viktor Krum Plan and letting
her and everyone else think he was interested in her. All it had done was to make her a target.
That was how he should have known it wasn’t Malfoy who’d done it; Malfoy knew all about
the Viktor Krum Plan.
They had to figure out who was sending Malfoy the owls. Harry had left Sandy upstairs when
he had planned to go running; he decided to make sure he was wearing her as much as possible
in future so that she could warn him about anything important that was going to happen. Such as
becoming a scapegoat who was accused of attacking the most popular student and the most
popular teacher in the school....
* * * * *
“Harry Potter.”
“Yes?”
“Why are we here?”
“I’m hiding.”
“Again?”
“Yes.”
“Should you be somewhere now?”
“Prefect meeting.”
“You do not like the meetings?”
“I hate them.”
“But your custom is to attend them.”
“Yes.”
“Then my question should have been, why have you gone in the past?”
“I’m supposed to.”
“How long will we be here?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll check the time.”
Harry pulled out his wand and lit it. He held up his watch to the light. It was just after nine
o’clock. The meeting had been going for about half-an-hour. After his Animagus training, he had
retrieved Sandy and pretended to Alicia that he was going to be at the meeting soon; the
Gryffindor prefects usually walked there together. Instead, Harry went to the third-floor
corridor and hid once more in the room where Fluffy had once held sway, as he had hidden
from Hermione during the Christmas holiday. He had been sitting in the dark, letting the quiet
cold seep into his bones, rather enjoying the fact of the hard stone floor, the complete lack of
comfort, in an I-deserve-to-suffer sort of way.
But he preferred not to think of himself as a martyr; Cho and Flitwick and the people who had
died in the Underground were martyrs. They were Voldemort’s victims and didn’t even know it.
He was Voldemort’s target. He knew it. He knew that he was to blame for Cho and Flitwick
being in the hospital wing. He also knew he could not withstand the accusing stares of the other
prefects at the meeting, even though he was not specifically guilty of the thing of which he was
accused. It was like Cedric all over again...
Going to Dueling Club that afternoon had been bad enough. For the second week, they were
screening the four new members. All of them but Pansy Parkinson were going to be staying in
the club. Unfortunately for some of the people who had been ranked at the bottom after the first
four weeks, that meant they were no longer members. Justin Finch-Fletchley and Colin Creevey
were cut, as was Millicent Bulstrode (Hermione refrained--just barely--from doing a dance of
glee).
Liam Quirke was rather put-out about Justin being cut, and appeared ready to complain to
Snape about it, but he had just squeaked in at number sixteen, so he looked like he decided not
to press his luck. The trouble was, three of the new people were just too good to let the others
stay. Fred Weasley had won a surprising fifteen out of nineteen duels in his two weeks, putting
him at number five, after Harry, Hermione, Ginny and Alicia. And Roger Davies’ brother Evan
was next, number six, with fourteen wins. Malfoy had only thirteen and was ranked seventh
now.
Roger was very miffed about being eighth, but at least now he was directing his ire at his
brother, Harry thought. Snape had eliminated their earlier duels with the cut members in order to
recalculate the standings; Malfoy hadn’t won against Fred or Evan, whereas he had against the
cut members, so his wins went down. The other new member was Lee Jordan, who had
performed well on a respectable nine out of nineteen duels, and was ranked right after Roger. Ron was somewhat disgruntled about having moved down to twelfth, after Crabbe and
Angelina.
Harry had avoided eye-contact with Ravenclaws--indeed, with most people--during the duels.
Fortunately, he only needed to duel once, and otherwise, only needed to be present to vote for
the winners. All of the duels were pretty clear cut, except for Fred and Evan, who were very
well matched, and Harry went with Fred partly out of house loyalty, but mostly because he had
disarmed Evan (who nonetheless received a number of votes from Ravenclaws).
“Harry Potter,” Sandy said again.
“Yes, Sandy?”
“How long will we be here?”
“Oh, sorry. My mind wandered. We could be here for another hour.”
“Will it be time for sleeping then?”
“Not quite. I have an essay to finish writing for Charms--” he started to say, then realized that
he actually didn’t need to bother with that. He swallowed, trying not to think of poor little
Flitwick...
Suddenly, the door he was leaning against swung open into the corridor, and Harry fell
backward. He was lying flat on the corridor floor now, the back of his head aching, looking up
at a very smug Draco Malfoy standing over him.
“So, Potter,” he drawled, “this is where you come to hide from your adoring public.”
“Yeah,” Harry replied, still lying down. “The adoring public that wants to flay me alive, behead
me, and feed my body to the giant squid in the lake.”
“Ah, the price of fame...” Malfoy was enjoying himself.
“What the hell are you doing here, Malfoy? How did you find me?”
“That parchment of yours...”
Harry sat up, panicking. “The map? How did you--”
“Oh! It’s a map!” He smiled. “Didn’t mean to tell me that, did you? Don’t get your knickers in
a twist, I still haven’t actually had a chance to look at the thing.”
Harry stood up slowly, glaring at him. “Is there a reason for you to be here Malfoy? Other than
annoying me? You don’t actually need to show up in person, you know. Just the fact of your existence is bloody annoying.”
Malfoy grinned. “I know. I go to bed every night confident in the knowledge that I can irk you
just by being. But sometimes that gets boring and I feel the need to do some active annoying.
Spice up my life. Necessary when you have to attend those damn weekly prefects’ meetings.
I’m starting to hate Davies more than you, and that’s a good trick.”
“If you hated me, you wouldn’t be here, Malfoy.”
“Au contraire. Being here means I don’t have to be there.”
“You still haven’t said how--”
Malfoy sighed. “All right. Don’t go thinking I’ve softened, because I haven’t. Like I said; being
here means I don’t have to be there.” He looked up and down the corridor. “Do you think we
could discuss this someplace that isn’t quite so public?”
Harry moved aside and let Malfoy enter the small room. He lit his wand again and closed the
door. Seeing how dim the room was with just the one light, Malfoy took out his wand and lit it
too. He looked around, frowning.
“There’s no place to sit.”
“I was sitting on the floor.” Harry did so again. Frowning and grumbling, Malfoy did the same,
awkwardly, as though he weren’t used to it. But then he, Harry thought, didn’t grow up in a
cupboard under the stairs.
“There are cultures around the world where everyone sits on the floor, Malfoy. Squatting is
actually pretty good for you.”
“I’ll leave that to you, Potter. Anyway, the prefects’ meeting. We were just getting started.
Davies had called the meeting to order, and then he announced that the first agenda item was a
question: Should a person remain a prefect when they have lured someone to a classroom in the
middle of the night and attacked that person with Dark Magic?”
“What?” Harry choked out.
“That’s what your girlfriend said. And Spinnet gave him a backhanded slap. On the arm,
unfortunately. I can’t get that horse thing out of my mind now...Anyway, she told Davies to shut
up, then looked around the room for you. She hadn’t noticed until then that you weren’t there.
She said that someone being accused of something had the right to be present to face their
accusers. Davies said that you clearly were ducking the meeting because you didn’t want to
face your accusers, and I was getting sick of it all, plus I wanted out of the meeting myself, so I
volunteered to come find you.”
“You volunteered?”
“Did you miss the part about getting out of the meeting, Potter? Anyway, Granger came after
me because she said she knew how to find you, and I’d just be wandering around the castle all
night. I personally had no objection to the wandering-around-the-castle thing, but I was
wondering how she expected to be able to find you, so I went along with her up to Gryffindor
Tower. She made me stand down the corridor while she gave the password--suspicious little
thing, isn’t she?--and maybe ten minutes later, she came out and told me to look up here for
you. She went back to take notes at the meeting. Afraid that Bulstrode would bollix it up.
Which she would, trust me. I merely assumed she or Weasley used that parchment you used
before when you told me Filch was in the entrance hall and some other people were in the
Trophy Room. Oh, and I never said--thanks for the tip about MacMillan and Abbott in the
Trophy Room. I got quite a show, and they were none the wiser...”
“Malfoy!”
“Oh, cut the holier-than-thou crap, Potter. At least I admit to being a voyeur. Who knows what
you’ve seen in that Invisibility Cloak of yours. Wish I had one. Have to do something to liven up
my boring existence. Anyway, Granger was right. Here you are, hiding out like a bunny and
twice as ugly. No, wait; that’s an insult to bunnies everywhere. Ten times as ugly; no twenty
times...”
“I get the picture, Malfoy.”
“Do you? I can say it a few more times if you like.”
“Would you like me to open that trap door and push you in it?” Harry said, gesturing toward
the rough wooden door where he’d first seen Fluffy standing. Malfoy frowned, not having
noticed it before.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t you remember first year, when Dumbledore said this room was off limits?”
Malfoy looked thoughtful for a moment. “Vaguely. You’re sure it was this room?”
“Yes. Because Ron and Hermione and I came in here.”
Malfoy’s jaw dropped. “What was in here?”
“A three-headed dog named Fluffy. Belonged to Hagrid. He was guarding that trap door. Want
to know what’s down there if you go through it?”
“I kind of wanted to know how you got past a three-headed dog, but then again--maybe I
don’t.”
“Well, after you go through the trap door, you fall for quite a while, finally landing on a lovely
plant called Devil’s Snare...”
“Devil’s Snare! All right, Potter, that’s enough. Are you going to come down to the meeting or
not?”
“You’re really all that anxious to go back to the meeting?” Harry checked his watch. “There’s
still more than half-an-hour to go.”
Malfoy looked like he’d forgotten something. “Oh. That’s right. Avoiding the meeting. Funny,
Spinnet looked like she suspected I just wanted to duck out; Granger didn’t seem to get that.”
“She was probably just worried about me. Wanted to know where I was herself.”
Malfoy looked confused now. “And she trusted me to come find you? What if I had put that
curse on the Charms doorway? She’d have been leading me right to you.”
“Hermione’s not stupid. She knew you hadn’t done the Charms doorway. And she knows I
can handle you when necessary. Care to have the sensation you’re upside-down in the air
again?”
Malfoy scowled, gripping his lit wand tightly. “Care to have tentacles growing all over your
face?”
Harry smiled. “You know, Malfoy, it’s not so bad hanging out with you sometimes. Especially
when the alternative is a prefects’ meeting.”
Malfoy nodded. “I’d take another class with Hagrid’s Blast-Ended Skrewts over a prefects’
meeting.”
Harry laughed. “I’ll tell you a secret; Ron and Hermione and I hated the Skrewts as much as the
rest of you.”
“I knew it!”
“Sssshh! Just don’t tell Hagrid. I wouldn’t want to hurt him.”
“What do you see in that overgrown, hairy--”
“Only the most loyal friend I’ve ever had,” Harry said firmly. “He took me away from my
horrid aunt and uncle, he told me I’m a wizard, he hand-delivered my Hogwarts letter and he
bought me my first-ever birthday present. Do you have a friend who’s done things like that for
you? Completely changed your life?”
Malfoy looked down at his hands, silent for once. Then he looked up at Harry, his face
strangely exposed in the flickering wandlight.
“Yes.” He said finally. He swallowed and looked down again. “Ginny.”
Harry’s mouth was dry. Malfoy was getting so attached to Ginny. It scared Harry. So much
was hanging on their relationship. What if, at some point, she simply decided she was tired of
him? What would Malfoy do then? Some people would be suicidal, Harry knew; however, in
Malfoy’s case he felt certain that the correct word would be homicidal. And he didn’t think
Ginny was the person Malfoy would feel like killing...
Harry checked his watch again after a few minutes of silence between them. “Only about twenty
minutes left. We might as well leave here. It’ll take about that long just to get out of this wing
and back to the stairs to Gryffindor Tower. And then you have to get all the way down to the
dungeons to the Slytherin common room...”
Malfoy narrowed his eyes. “How do you know where the Slytherin common room is?”
Harry stopped moving abruptly, trying not to give anything away, then deciding that it was long
ago, what did it matter? “Well--I’ve been in there.”
“You have? When?”
“Second year.”
“Didn’t anyone notice?”
“No.”
“Were you in that damn Invisibility Cloak?”
“No.”
“Listen Potter, give me something to go on. Okay, why were you in the Slytherin common
room?”
“I wanted information.”
“What information?”
“I wanted to know whether you were the heir of Slytherin. Turns out you’re not. End of story.”
“End of story? When you can come into my common room any time you want?”
“Did I say that? It was actually quite difficult. Took weeks and weeks of planning, and finally, Hermione wasn’t able to go, just Ron and I.”
“Weasley was in there too? Oh, now I will have to make sure we completely decontaminate the
place...”
Harry smiled. “Just think. You don’t know what has been touched by me or Ron...”
He stood up, enjoying needling Malfoy. Malfoy also stood, in one graceful motion, without help.
Harry opened the door and looked up and down the corridor; the torches flickered on the walls
and the wind scoured the leaded windows, but no one was in sight. He gestured for Malfoy to
follow him and closed the door after he had exited.
They walked to the stairs silently; their feet echoing eerily in the otherwise empty corridor; they
passed door after door to rooms they’d never seen, rooms that could hold anything. Harry
didn’t wonder that even Dumbledore didn’t feel that he really knew all of Hogwarts’ secrets.
Did anyone even know what any of these rooms held, or what they were for? he wondered. It
might be useful to start investigating more about the castle, he realized. Especially if there was a
Death Eater in Hogwarts other than Malfoy who was using obscure curses to ambush people
going in and out of classrooms...
* * * * *
Harry went up to bed as soon as he returned to Gryffindor Tower. When Ron opened his
bedcurtains to check on him, he feigned sleep. He heard Ron go to the door of the room, yell
down the stairs, “He’s in bed! Asleep! Now you go to bed, already! Good night!” Must be
Hermione he’s bellowing at, Harry thought. She was probably driving Ron starkers obsessing
about where he was. Confident he wouldn’t be bothered any more, he rolled over and went to
sleep.
The next morning, he rose to run as usual, and when Hermione started to ask him about where
he was during the meeting, he simply told her he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Well, some of us had to sit through a meeting where you were basically tried in absentia! A lot
of good Malfoy was; after I told him where to find you, he didn’t come back either,” she
complained. “Luckily, Alicia was able to stop Roger from turning it into a kangaroo court and
move us on to other topics.”
“Like detentions and house points...”
She flushed while doing her warm-up exercises. “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly.
“Hermione, have you ever given someone detention? Or taken away house points? After all,
we’re allowed to, as prefects.”
She frowned. “No. I suppose I’ve seen you and Ron get too many detentions, and felt too
awful when I’ve caused points to be taken from Gryffindor to want to do it to someone else.
Guess I’m just an old softie.”
Harry grinned at her. “We’ll have to toughen you up before you’re Head Girl. You’ve got two
years...”
She smiled with pleasure, looking down. “You really think I’ll be Head Girl?”
He looked at her levelly. “No, I really believe it will be Millicent Bulstrode, Hannah Abbott or
Mandy Brocklehurst. Honestly, Hermione! Who else would it be? Look who the other fifthyear
girl prefects are!”
“Oh. So you’re saying that of courseI’ll be Head Girl because they’re all so lame...”
Harry closed his eyes in frustration. “No, no, that’s not what I meant at all...”
Hermione smiled sunnily at him and stood. “Got your mind off your other troubles, didn’t I?
Ready to go?”
Harry shook his head at her. “You’re very sneaky, you know that, Hermione Granger?”
“I’m sneaky? You should talk, Mr. Going-Off-With-McGonagall-To---”
“Sssshhh! Come on, someone could come down any second!”
She kissed him on the cheek, then opened the portrait. “I’ll be good. I promise.” She climbed
out, while Harry shook his head again, laughing.
After he showered, he started going back down to the Great Hall for breakfast, but his feet
were somehow taking him to the hospital wing. He realized that he hadn’t gone there yet to find
out how Cho was. Would that make it seem like he was guilty or innocent? he wondered. No.
Stop. It doesn’t matter what others think. It’s the right thing to do, to check up on her and see
how she is, and Flitwick. It’s my fault they’re both there, he thought.
When he reached the door to the infirmary, he hesitated for a moment before turning the knob.
His hand was shaking. Finally, he grasped and turned it, opening it slowly. He saw a hulking
dark shape on the far side of the ward, sitting in a chair next to one of the beds.
It was Viktor Krum.
Harry backed up and peeked through the crack between door and jamb. Viktor! What was he
doing here? Harry wondered.
Viktor held Cho’s hand as she lay back in the bed, oblivious, her skin very pale. Her lashes were very dark on her cheeks; her hai
