HP & The Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry

James, Remus, and Sirius found Harry in his dorm room (which was a bit awkward considering that the staff didn't visit their children in their dorms), sitting alone and pretending to read a book, but actually just talking to his friends in his head. The holidays had ended a few days ago already, and he had already completed all his homework. Harry sat up quickly.

"So," James said in a way of greeting, clapping his hands, "Pads told us about your idea, Harry, and we find it brilliant."

"We went to Dumbledore and he happily gave us permission to start our own club." Remus smirked.

Sirius smiled. "For fifth years and up, we'll be teaching the Patronus charm in the Great Hall, at eight o'clock on Thursday evenings."

Harry grinned broadly and whooped. "Thank you!"

Of course, this didn't appease Charles at all, who also wanted to learn the spell. Harry offered to give him private lessons if he got the time, and that Charles would owe him. That was the best deal the younger one could get, and had to agree.

So, Harry left Gryffindor Tower for the Great Hall that Thursday at eight, meeting up with his friends there. The desks had all vanished, and the three Marauders were on the high step.

"Welcome, everyone," James started, "This is the club - or whatever you wanna call it - to teach you the Patronus Charm. It's become a necessity due to the dementors recently."

Remus coughed, "Before we start, I must warn you that the spell we are going to try and teach you - the Patronus Charm - is highly advanced magic. Well beyond ordinary Wizarding Level. The Patronus is a kind of anti-dementor - a guardian that acts as a shield between you and the dementor."

Harry had a sudden vision of himself crouching behind a Hagridsized figure holding a large club and held in a snicker, sending the image to his friends in his mind, who threw his funny looks. He grinned sheepishly.

Remus continued, "The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the dementor feeds upon - hope, happiness, the desire to survive - but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the dementors can't hurt it. The charm is very advanced; many qualified wizards have difficulty with it. So, don't be disheartened if you fail the first few times."

A muggle-born girl raised her hand and asked curiously. "What does a Patronus look like?"

"Each one is unique to the wizard who conjures it," Sirius replied. "You conjure it with an incantation, which will work only if you are concentrating, with all your might, on a single, very happy memory. Right, so everyone take out their wands and select their memories."

"The incantation is this-" James cleared his throat. "Expecto patronum!"

Everyone repeated it a few times and then tried to fit it with their memories. Harry had the one selected when he first went out to the Shrieking Shack with the other Prowlers. 

Something whooshed suddenly out of the end of his wand; it looked like a wisp of silvery gas that remained for about thirty seconds before disappearing.

Alicia turned to him in awe. "So cool, Harry!"

"Well done, Harry," Remus smiled kindly from where he was helping Cedric.

Charles

Ravenclaw played Slytherin a week after the start of term. Slytherin won, though narrowly. Lyra had been Seeker. This was good news for Gryffindor, who would take second place if they beat Ravenclaw too. He therefore increased the number of team practices to five a week. This was bad news for Harry, who nowadays had dark bags under his eyes. Charles felt for him; he had OWLs and was taking too many subjects which now seemed to burden him. He also had his girlfriend and his friends whom Charles could tell Harry wasn't able to make time for.

So, Charles cut him some slack and didn't pester him for extra Patronus lessons.

Harry's strain was even more than Hermione's, whose immense workload finally seemed to be getting to her. Every night, without fail, Hermione was to be seen in a corner of the common room, several tables spread with books, arithmancy charts, rune dictionaries, diagrams of Muggles lifting heavy objects, and file upon file of extensive notes; she barely spoke to anybody and snapped when she was interrupted.

"How's she doing it?" Ron muttered to Charles one evening as he sat finishing a nasty essay on Undetectable Poisons for Snape. He looked up. Hermione was barely visible behind a tottering pile of books.

"Doing what?"

"Getting to all her classes!" Ron cried. "I heard her talking to the Runes teacher this morning. They were going on about yesterday's lesson, but Hermione couldn't have been there, because she was with us in Care of Magical Creatures! And Ernie McMillan told me she's never missed a Muggle Studies class, but half of them are at the same time as Divination, and she's never missed one of them either!"

Charles didn't have time to fathom the mystery of Hermione's impossible schedule at the moment; he needed to get on with Snape's essay. 

January faded imperceptibly into February, with no change in the bitterly cold weather. The match against Ravenclaw was drawing nearer and nearer. After a 'cheery' Quidditch practice, Charles entered the common room and looked around at Ron and Hermione, who were sitting near the fire, doing homework. Making his way towards them, Charles pointedly asked, "May I sit here, 'Mione?"

Hermione ignored his tone as she moved a great stack of parchment off the said chair. "I suppose so."

"Hey, I'll take your Firebolt, Charles," Ron eagerly offered, "I've got to give Sacbbers his rat tonic."

Charles smiled as Ron took the Firebolt as if it were made of glass and carried it upstairs. Everyone - including Ron - was still quite enamored with his new broom. Charles had taken to keeping his broom in his dorm room and not in the school cupboard, not wanting to risk it being tampered by other team players.  

Charles looked around at the cluttered table, at the long Ancient Studies essay on which the ink was still glistening, at the even longer Muggle Studies essay ("Explain Why Muggles Need Electricity"), and at the rune translation Hermione was now poring over.

"How are you getting through all this stuff?" he asked her.

"Oh, well - you know - working hard," Hermione shrugged. Close-up, Charles saw that she looked about to drop dead any second.

"Why don't you just drop a couple of subjects?" Charles asked in concern, watching her lifting books as she searched for her rune dictionary.

Hermione looked scandalized. "I couldn't do that!"

"Ancient Studies looks terrible," Charles commented, picking up a very complicated and ancient-looking chart.

"Oh no, it's wonderful!" Hermione said earnestly. "It's my second favorite subject! It's -"

But exactly what was wonderful about Ancient Studies, Charles never found out. At that precise moment, a strangled yell echoed down the boys' staircase. The whole common room fell silent, staring, petrified, at the entrance. Then came hurried footsteps, growing louder and louder - and then Ron came leaping into view, dragging with him a bedsheet.

"LOOK!" he bellowed, striding over to Hermione's table. "LOOK!" he yelled, shaking the sheets in her face.

"Ron, what -?"

"SCABBERS! LOOK! SCABBERS!"

Hermione was leaning away from Ron, looking utterly bewildered. Charles looked down at the sheet Ron was holding. There was something red on it. Something that looked horribly like - 

"BLOOD!" Ron yelled into the stunned silence. "HE'S GONE! AND YOU KNOW WHAT WAS ON THE FLOOR?"

"N - no," said Hermione in a trembling voice.

Ron threw something down onto Hermione's rune translation. Hermione and Charles leaned forward. Lying on top of the weird, spiky shapes were several long, ginger cat hairs.

It looked like the end of Ron and Hermione's friendship. Each was so angry with the other that Charles couldn't see how they'd ever make up. 

Ron was enraged that Hermione had never taken Crookshanks's attempts to eat Scabbers seriously, hadn't bothered to keep a close enough watch on him, and was still looking for Scabbers under all the boys' beds.

Hermione, meanwhile, maintained fiercely that Ron had no proof that Crookshanks had eaten Scabbers, that the ginger hairs might have been there since Christmas, and that Ron had been prejudiced against her cat ever since Crookshanks had landed on Ron's head in the Magical Menagerie.

Personally, Charles was sure that Crookshanks had eaten Scabbers, and when he tried to point out to Hermione that the evidence all pointed that way, she lost her temper with Charles too.

"Okay, side with Ron, I knew you would!" she said shrilly. "Everything's my fault, isn't it? Just leave me alone, Charles, I've got a lot of work to do!"

Ron had taken the loss of his rat very hard indeed.

"Come on, Ron, you were always saying how boring Scabbers was," Fred said bracingly. "And he's been off-color for ages, he was wasting away. It was probably better for him to snuff it quickly - one swallow - he probably didn't feel a thing."

"Fred!" Harry admonished his friend indignantly.

"All he did was eat and sleep, Ron, you said it yourself," George shrugged.

"He bit Goyle for us once!" Ron said miserably. "Remember, Charles?"

"Yeah, that's true," Charles agreed.

"His finest hour," Fred said, unable to keep a straight face. "Let the scar on Goyle's finger stand as a lasting tribute to his memory. Oh, come on, Ron, get yourself down to Hogsmeade and buy a new rat, what's the point of moaning?"

In a last-ditch attempt to cheer Ron up, Charles persuaded him to come along to the Gryffindor team's final practice before the Ravenclaw match, so that he could have a ride on the Firebolt after they'd finished. This did seem to take Ron's mind off Scabbers for a moment ("Great! Can I try and shoot a few goals on it?") so they set off for the Quidditch field together.

Madam Hooch, who was still overseeing Gryffindor practices to keep an eye on Charles, was just as impressed with the Firebolt as everyone else was. She took it in her hands before takeoff and gave them the benefit of her professional opinion.

"Look at the balance on it! If the Nimbus series has a fault, it's a slight list to the tail end - you often find they develop a drag after a few years. They've updated the handle too, a bit slimmer than the Cleansweeps, reminds me of the old Silver Arrows - a Pity they've stopped making them. I learned to fly on one, and a very fine old broom it was too..."

She continued in this vein for some time, until Wood said, "Er - Madam Hooch? Is it okay if Charles has the Firebolt back? We need to practice..."

"Oh - right - here you are, then, Potter," said Madam Hooch. "I'll sit over here with Weasley..."

She and Ron left the field to sit in the stadium, and the Gryffindor team gathered around Wood for his final instructions for tomorrow's match.

"Charles, I've just found out who Ravenclaw is playing as Seeker. It's Cho Chang. She's a fourth year, and she's pretty good... I really hoped she wouldn't be fit, she's had some problems with injuries...." Wood scowled his displeasure that Cho Chang had made a full recovery, then said, "On the other hand, she rides a Comet Two Sixty, which is going to look like a joke next to the Firebolt." He gave Harry's broom a look of fervent admiration, then said, "Okay, everyone, let's go."

And at long last, Charles mounted his Firebolt and kicked off from the ground.

It was better than he'd ever dreamed. The Firebolt turned with the lightest touch; it seemed to obey his thoughts rather than his grip; it sped across the field at such speed that the stadium turned into a green-and-gray blur; Charles turned it so sharply that Alicia screamed, and then he went into a perfectly controlled dive, brushing the grassy field with his toes before rising thirty, forty, fifty feet into the air again.

"Charles, I'm letting the Snitch out!" Wood called.

Charles turned and raced a Bludger toward the goalposts; he outstripped it easily, saw the Snitch dart out from behind Wood, and within ten seconds had caught it tightly in his hand.

The team cheered madly. Charles let the Snitch go again, gave it a minute's head start, then tore after it, weaving in and out of the others; he spotted it lurking near Angelina's knee, looped her easily, and caught it again.

It was the best practice ever; the team, inspired by the presence of the Firebolt in their midst, performed their best moves faultlessly, and by the time they hit the ground again, Wood didn't have a single criticism to make, which, as George pointed out, was a first.

"I can't see what's going to stop us tomorrow!" said Wood. "Not unless - Charles, you've sorted out your dementor problem, haven't you?"

"Uh..." Charles hesitated.

"All of us can produce an incorporeal Patronus by now," Harry said, "So we can take care of it."

Oliver nodded, frowning. Their Patronuses were still feeble... "The dementors won't turn up again, Oliver. Dumbledore'd go ballistic," said Fred confidently.

"Well, let's hope not," Wood sighed. "Anyway - good work, everyone. Let's get back to the tower... turn in early -"

"I'm staying out for a bit; Ron wants a go on the Firebolt," Charles told Wood, and while the rest of the team headed off to the locker rooms, Charles strode over to Ron, who vaulted the barrier to the stands and came to meet him. Madam Hooch had fallen asleep in her seat.

"Here you go," Charles handed Ron the Firebolt.

Ron, an expression of ecstasy on his face, mounted the broom and zoomed off into the gathering darkness while Charles walked around the edge of the field, watching him. Night had fallen before Madam Hooch awoke with a start, told the boys off for not waking her, and insisted that they go back to the castle.

Charles shouldered the Firebolt and he and Ron walked out of the shadowy stadium, discussing the Firebolt's superbly smooth action, its phenomenal acceleration, and its pinpoint turning. They were halfway toward the castle when Charles, glancing to his left, saw something that made his heart turn over - a pair of eyes, gleaming out of the darkness.

He stopped dead, his heart banging against his ribs.

"What's the matter?" Ron asked.

Charles pointed. Ron pulled out his wand and muttered, "Lumos!"

A beam of light fell across the grass, hit the bottom of a tree, and illuminated its branches; there, crouching among the budding leaves, was Crookshanks.

"Get out of here!" Ron roared, and he stooped down and seized a stone lying on the grass, but before he could do anything else, Crookshanks had vanished with one swish of his long ginger tail.

"See?" Ron said furiously, chucking the stone down again. "She's still letting him wander about wherever he wants - probably washing down Scabbers with a couple of birds now..."

Charles didn't say anything. He took a deep breath as relief seeped through him; he had been sure for a moment that those eyes had belonged to something else... a cat, maybe, but...

They set off for the castle once more. slightly ashamed of his moment of panic, Charles didn't say anything to Ron - nor did he look left or right until they had reached the well-lit entrance hall.

Harry

Harry went down to breakfast the next morning with the rest of the boys in his dormitory, along with Charles and Ron, all of whom seemed to think the Firebolt deserved a sort of guard of honor. As they entered the Great Hall, heads turned in the direction of the Firebolt, and there was a good deal of excited muttering. They hadn't made the Firebolt public yet, so it was the first time most people were seeing it. In fact, Harry'd not even told his best friends.

Harry saw Charles smirking in the direction of the Slytherin team, who were all looking thunderstruck.

"Did you see his face?" Ron said gleefully, looking back at Malfoy. "He can't believe it! This is brilliant!"

Wood, too, was basking in the reflected glory of the Firebolt.

"Put it here, Charles," he said, laying the broom in the middle of the table and carefully turning it so that its name faced upward. People from the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables were soon coming over to look. Harry's friends came over to congratulate Charles on having acquired such a superb replacement for his Nimbus. Percy's Ravenclaw girlfriend, Penelope Clearwater, asked if she could actually hold the Firebolt.

"Now, now, Penny, no sabotage!" said Percy heartily as she examined the Firebolt closely. "Penelope and I have got a bet on," he told the team. "Ten Galleons on the outcome of the match!"

Penelope put the Firebolt down again, thanked Charles, and went back to her table.

"Charles - make sure you win," said Percy, in an urgent whisper. "I haven't got ten Galleons. Yes, I'm coming, Penny!" And he bustled off to join her in a piece of toast.

"Sure you can manage that broom, Potter?" said a cold, drawling voice.

Draco Malfoy had arrived for a closer look, Crabbe and Coyle right behind him.

"Yeah, reckon so," Charles said casually.

"Got plenty of special features, hasn't it?" said Malfoy, eyes glittering maliciously. "Shame it doesn't come with a parachute - in case you get too near a dementor."

Crabbe and Goyle sniggered.

"At least he doesn't need a diaper," Harry shot back with his eyes narrowed. 

Malfoy reddened, flustered.

"Isn't it a pity you can't attach an extra arm to yours, Malfoy?" Charles added, looking over at his team. "Then it could catch the Snitch for you."

The Gryffindor team laughed loudly. Malfoy's pale eyes narrowed, and he stalked away trying to save at least some of his dignity. They watched him rejoin the rest of the Slytherin team, who put their heads together, no doubt asking Malfoy whether Charles' broom really was a Firebolt.

At a quarter to eleven, the Gryffindor team set off for the locker rooms. The weather couldn't have been more different from their match against Hufflepuff. It was a clear, cool day with a very light breeze; there would be no visibility problems this time, and Harry could feel the excitement only a Quidditch match could bring.

They could hear the rest of the school moving into the stadium beyond. Harry took off his black school robes, removed his wand from his pocket, and stuck it inside the T-shirt he was going to wear under his Quidditch robes. He only hoped he wouldn't need it. 

"You know what we've got to do," said Wood as they prepared to leave the locker rooms. "If we lose this match, we're out of the running. Just fly like you did in practice yesterday, and we'll be okay!"

They walked out onto the field to tumultuous applause. The Ravenclaw team, dressed in blue, was already standing in the middle of the field. Their Seeker, Cho Chang, was the only girl on their team. She was shorter than Charles by about a head, and extremely pretty. She smiled at them as the teams faced each other behind their captains, and Harry smirked as he watched Charles' cheeks tinge pink.

"Wood, Davies, shake hands," Madam Hooch said briskly, and Wood shook hands with Roger, who winked at Harry.

"Mount your brooms... on my whistle... three -- two -- one --"

Harry kicked off into the air and saw that the Firebolt with Charles zoomed higher and faster than any other broom; Charles focused on his own game, all the while listening to the commentary by Lee Jordan. 

"They're off, and the big excitement of this match is the Firebolt that Charles Potter is flying for Gryffindor. According to Which Broomstick, the Firebolt's going to be the broom of choice for the national teams at this year's World Championship -"

"Jordan, would you mind telling us what's going on in the match?" interrupted Professor McGonagall's voice.

"Right you are, Professor - just giving a bit of background information - the Firebolt, incidentally, has a built-in auto-brake and -"

"Jordan!"

"Okay, okay, Gryffindor in possession, Alicia Spinnet of Gryffindor, heading for goal..."

Harry streaked past Fred and signaled for Alicia to pass him the Quaffle. The game continued on. 

"Gryffindor leads by eighty points to zero, and look at that Firebolt go! Charles' really putting it through its paces now, see it turn - Chang's Comet is just no match for it, the Firebolt's precision balance is really noticeable in these long -"

"JORDAN! ARE YOU BEING PAID TO ADVERTISE FIREBOLTS? GET ON WITH THE COMMENTARY!"

Ravenclaw was pulling back; they had now scored three goals, which put Gryffindor only fifty points ahead - if Cho got the Snitch before Charles, Ravenclaw would win. Harry dropped lower, narrowly avoiding a Ravenclaw Chaser, scanning the field frantically - a glint of gold, a flutter of tiny wings -- the Snitch was circling the Gryffindor goalpost -

Harry shouted, "Charles!" and pointed at the place.

Charles immediately accelerated, upon the speck of gold ahead - but just then, Chang appeared out of thin air, blocking him -

"CHARLES, THIS IS NO TIME TO BE A GENTLEMAN!" Wood roared as Charles swerved to avoid a collision. "KNOCK HER OFF HER BROOM IF YOU HAVE TO!"

Harry snorted at his brother and turned and caught sight of Cho; she was grinning at Charles. The Snitch had vanished again. Harry signaled to Charles again, who turned his Firebolt upward and was soon twenty feet above the game. Chang was following him... She'd decided to mark him rather than search for the Snitch herself...

Suddenly, Charles dived again, and Chang, thinking he'd seen the Snitch, tried to follow; Charles pulled out of the dive very sharply; she hurtled downward; he rose fast as a bullet once more, and then he accelerated; so, many feet below, did Chang. He was winning, gaining on the Snitch with every second - Harry waited with baited breath - then -

"Oh!" screamed Cho, pointing. Distracted, Charles and Harry also looked down.

Three dementors, three tall, black, hooded dementors, were looking up at them. Harry didn't even stop to think. Plunging a hand down the neck of his robes, he whipped out his wand and roared, "Expecto patronum!"

Something silver-white, something enormous, erupted from the end of his wand. It had shot directly at the dementors and he watched in astonishment as he saw that it was a huge owl; in fact, it was exactly like Sera's form...

Madam Hooch's whistle sounded. Harry turned around in midair, attention diverted from his Patronus, and saw five scarlet blurs bearing down on him and Charles; the next moment, the whole team was hugging the Potter brothers so hard that they were nearly pulled off his broom. Down below they could hear the roars of the Gryffindors in the crowd.

"That's my boy!" Wood kept yelling. Alicia kissed Harry deeply; Fred had him in a grip so tight Harry felt as though his head would come off In complete disarray, the team managed to make its way back to the ground. Harry got off his broom and helped Charles, then looked up to see a gaggle of Gryffindor supporters sprinting onto the field.

Before they knew it, they had been engulfed by the cheering crowd.

"Yes!" Ron yelled, yanking Charles' arm into the air. "Yes! Yes!"

"Well done, Charles!" said Percy, looking delighted. "Ten Galleons to me! Must find Penelope, excuse me -"

"Good for you, Harry!" roared Seamus Finnigan.

"Ruddy brilliant!" boomed Hagrid over the heads of the milling Gryffindors.

"That was quite some Patronus," said a voice in Harry's ear.

Harry turned around to see Remus and James, who looked both shaken and pleased.

"The dementors didn't affect me at all!" Harry said excitedly. "I didn't feel a thing!"

"That would be because they - er - weren't dementors," Remus admitted sheepishly. "Come and see -"

The adults led Harry out of the crowd until they were able to see the edge of the field.

"You gave Mr. Malfoy quite a fright," James smirked.

Harry stared. Lying in a crumpled heap on the ground were Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Marcus Flint, all struggling to remove themselves from long, black, hooded robes. It looked as though Malfoy had been standing on Goyle's shoulders. Standing over them, with an expression of the utmost fury on her face, was Professor McGonagall.

"An unworthy trick!" she was shouting. "A low and cowardly attempt to sabotage the Gryffindor Seeker! Detention for all of you, and fifty points from Slytherin! I shall be speaking to Professor Dumbledore about this, make no mistake! Ah, here he comes now!"

If anything could have set the seal on Gryffindor's victory, it was this. Jéricho, who had fought his way through to Harry's side, doubled up with laughter as they watched Malfoy fighting to extricate himself from the robe, Goyle's head still stuck inside it. Sera and Cedric soon joined in.

"Come on, Harry!" said George, fighting his way over. "Party! Gryffindor common room, now!"

"Right," said Harry, and feeling happier than he had in ages, he and the rest of the team led the way, still in their scarlet robes, out of the stadium and back up to the castle.

Charles

It felt as though they had already won the Quidditch Cup; the party went on all day and well into the night. Harry, Fred, and George disappeared for a couple of hours and returned with armfuls of bottles of butterbeer, pumpkin fizz, and several bags full of Honeydukes sweets.

"How did you do that?" squealed Angelina as George started throwing Peppermint Toads into the crowd.

"Secret," Fred winked.

Only one person wasn't joining in the festivities. Hermione, incredibly, was sitting in a corner, attempting to read an enormous book entitled Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles. Charles broke away from the table where Fred and George had started juggling butterbeer bottles and went over to her.

"Did you even come to the match?" he asked her.

"Of course I did," Hermione replied in a strangely high-pitched voice, not looking up. "And I'm very glad we won, and I think you did really well, but I need to read this by Monday."

"Come on, Hermione, come and have some food," Charles said, looking over at Ron and wondering whether he was in a good enough mood to bury the hatchet.

"I can't, Charles. I've still got four hundred and twenty-two pages to read!" Hermione said, now sounding slightly hysterical. "Anyway..." She glanced over at Ron too. "He doesn't want me to join in."

There was no arguing with this, as Ron chose that moment to say loudly, "If Scabbers hadn't just been eaten, he could have had some of those Fudge Flies. He used to really like them --"

Hermione burst into tears. Before Charles could say or do anything, she tucked the enormous book under her arm, and, still sobbing, ran toward the staircase to the girls' dormitories and out of sight.

"Can't you give her a break?" Charles asked Ron quietly.

"No," Ron said flatly. "If she just acted like she was sorry - but she'll never admit she's wrong, Hermione. She's still acting like Scabbers has gone on vacation or something."

The Gryffindor party ended only when Professor McGonagall turned up in her tartan dressing gown and hair net at one in the morning, to insist that they all go to bed. Charles and Ron climbed the stairs to their dormitory, still discussing the match. At last, exhausted, Charles climbed into bed, twitched the hangings of his four-poster shut to block out a ray of moonlight, lay back, and felt himself almost instantly drifting off to sleep...

He had a very strange dream. He was walking through a forest, his Firebolt over his shoulder, following something silvery-white. It was winding its way through the trees ahead, and he could only catch glimpses of it between the leaves. Anxious to catch up with it, he sped up, but as he moved faster, so did his quarry. Charles broke into a run, and ahead he heard hooves gathering speed. Now he was running flat out, and ahead he could hear galloping. Then he turned a corner into a clearing and -

"AAARRGGHH! NOOO!"

Charles woke as suddenly as though he'd been hit in the face. Disoriented in the total darkness, he fumbled with his hangings, he could hear movements around him, and Seamus Finnigan's voice from the other side of the room: "What's going on?"

Charles thought he heard the dormitory door slam. At last, finding the divide in his curtains, he ripped them back, and at the same moment, Dean Thomas lit his lamp.

Ron was sitting up in bed, the hangings torn from one side, a look of utmost terror on his face.

"Black! Regulus Black! With a knife!"

"What?"

"Here! Just now! Slashed the curtains! Woke me up!"

"You sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?" Dean asked.

Ron insisted, "Look at the curtains! I tell you, he was here!"

They all scrambled out of bed; Charles reached the dormitory door first, and they sprinted back down the staircase. Doors opened behind them, and sleepy voices called after them.

"Who shouted?" "What're you doing?"

The common room was lit with the glow of the dying fire, still littered with the debris from the party. It was deserted.

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?"

"I'm telling you, I saw him!"

"What's all the noise?"

"Professor McGonagall told us to go to bed!"

A few of the girls had come down their staircase, pulling or, dressing gowns and yawning. Boys, too, were reappearing.

"Excellent, are we carrying on?" Fred said brightly.

"Everyone back upstairs!" Percy exclaimed, hurrying into the common room and pinning his Head Boy badge to his pajamas as he spoke.

"Perce - Regulus Black!" said Ron faintly. "In our dormitory! With a knife! Woke me up!"

The common room went very still.

"Nonsense!" said Percy, looking startled. "You had too much to eat, Ron - had a nightmare -"

"I'm telling you -"

"Now, really, enough's enough!"

Professor McGonagall was back. She slammed the portrait behind her as she entered the common room and stared furiously around.

"I am delighted that Gryffindor won the match, but this is getting ridiculous! Percy, I expected better of you!"

"I certainly didn't authorize this, Professor!" said Percy, puffing himself up indignantly. "I was just telling them all to get back to bed! My brother Ron here had a nightmare -"

"IT WASN'T A NIGHTMARE!" Ron yelled. "PROFESSOR, I WOKE UP, AND REGULUS BLACK WAS STANDING OVER ME, HOLDING A KNIFE!"

Professor McGonagall stared at him. "Don't be ridiculous, Weasley, how could he possibly have gotten through the portrait hole?"

"Ask him!" Ron insisted, pointing a shaking finger at the back of Sir Cadogan's picture. "Ask him if he saw -"

Glaring suspiciously at Ron, Professor McGonagall pushed the Portrait back open and went outside. The whole common room listened with bated breath. "Sir Cadogan, did you just let a man enter Gryffindor Tower?"

"Certainly, good lady!" cried Sir Cadogan.

There was a stunned silence, both inside and outside the common room. "You - you did?" said Professor McGonagall. "But - but the password!"

"He had 'em!" said Sir Cadogan proudly. "Had the whole week's, my lady! Read 'em off a little piece of paper!"

Professor McGonagall pulled herself back through the portrait hole to face the stunned crowd. She was white as chalk.

"Which person," she said, her voice shaking, "which abysmally foolish person wrote down this week's passwords and left them lying around?"

There was utter silence, broken by the smallest of terrified squeaks. Neville Longbottom, trembling from head to fluffy slippered toes, raised his hand slowly into the air.