Chapter 24
Chapter 24
Late that night, ten minutes before midnight, one of the barrels in a corner of the basement corridor shifted. A young wizard in a dressing gown stealthily crawled out.
He sighed softly, looked both ways, then scampered up the stairs.
At the portrait entrance to Gryffindor Tower, meanwhile, an argument erupted.
It ended with two young wizards storming out of the common room while two others followed at a distance.
“Brr. I should have put on more clothes.”
Suer rubbed his hands together as he hid in the shadow of a shield-bearing statue outside the trophy room, peering through a gap toward the corridor.
“Here they come!”
Moonlight poured through the tall windows, illuminating the entire fourth-floor corridor. It also revealed the approaching faces with perfect clarity–so clearly that Suer could make out both the excitement and the tension on Harry’s and Ron’s faces as they ran at the front.
The pair tiptoed past the statue concealing Suer and slipped straight into the trophy room. A moment later, Hermione and Neville appeared as well.
Not one of the four noticed Suer hiding by the door.
The room was empty and silent. However quietly its occupants spoke, every word could be heard from outside.
Listening to their back-and-forth “whispered” argument, Suer decided it was time to make his entrance.
“Malfoy isn’t coming.”
Suer’s sudden voice made everyone in the trophy room jump.
Harry drew his wand with remarkable speed and pointed it at Suer, evidently having mistaken him for Malfoy.
“Suer! Why are you here too?” Hermione pressed one hand to her chest, looking badly shaken.
“Why do you think? I came looking for all of you.” Suer glared at the four of them and invented an explanation on the spot. “After dinner, I saw Malfoy sneak a note into Filch’s office.”
“So we’ve been tricked?” Harry lowered his wand and stared at him blankly.
“I knew it…” Hermione said. “I knew Malfoy was up to no good! But neither of you would listen. I nearly went and told Professor McGonagall!”
“There’s more,” Suer said. “Filch is bound to be nearby.”
The instant he finished speaking, Filch’s voice came from the adjoining room.
“Professor, I heard it. There was definitely a noise in there.”
Professor?!
All four stared at Suer in horror.
“Why are you looking at me? Hide!”
The five scattered. Suer glanced around, seized Hermione by the hand, and led the charge toward the largest trophy case.
He stepped onto the display plinth, gripped the edge of a trophy, and peered inside. The cup was enormous and hollow–large enough to conceal a person.
“Quick, climb in,” Suer whispered urgently.
“What about you?” Hermione shook her head.
“I’ll find a way.” Suer gave her a push, urging her to climb inside and hide. “Don’t make a sound.”
Curled up stiffly inside the trophy, Hermione held her breath and listened as Suer’s footsteps receded.
Then more footsteps and voices echoed through the empty room.
“My potion has reached a critical stage, and you dragged me here because of a note whose authenticity you cannot even establish…”
It was Professor Snape’s voice! Hermione was so tense she forgot how to blink.
“Professor, I know what I heard. There was someone moving around in here just now,” Filch’s aged voice replied.
“And yet the fact remains that there is no one here.” Snape’s voice was ice-cold. “I do not have time to accompany you on a search of the entire fourth floor.”
Snape turned and left. Hermione could recognise his stride.
No one else in the castle walked with quite the same snap of robes striking the air.
“Good kitty. There’s someone in here, I’m sure of it,” Filch told his cat, evidently unwilling to give up. “Sniff them out.”
“Meow…”
Filch’s footsteps wandered around the trophy room for a long while before finally fading away.
After another pause, Suer’s voice rang out.
“You can come out now, Hermione. It’s safe.”
By the time Hermione climbed out, Ron, Harry, and Neville had already gathered around Suer. She had no idea where they had hidden.
“You two nearly got us killed.” Hermione glared ferociously at Harry and Ron, clutching the front of her clothes as she fumed.
Ron opened his mouth as if to argue, but Harry tugged at him. Both boys lowered their heads in shame.
“All right, let’s get back to our common rooms,” Suer said, rescuing them. “Filch could return at any moment.”
Everyone agreed. The five crept toward the door.
The corridor outside was perfectly still, moonlight flowing silently across the floor through the windows.
They parted at the staircase, Suer heading down while the other four went up.
“It’s a good thing you came to warn us,” Harry said. “If we’d been caught, we’d have been done for.”
Neville looked at Suer gratefully as well.
“Don’t mention it.” Suer waved. “See you tomorrow, Hermione, Neville, Harry.”
Ron: Do I not deserve a name?
Although it was nearly midnight, the lamps mounted on the first-floor walls were still crackling and shedding light. The castle was considerably gloomier than it had been just after nightfall, however.
Suer was about to descend the final flight of stairs when he heard footsteps coming from the floor below.
“Damn. Surely I haven’t run into a professor on the way to the kitchens for a midnight snack?”
Older Hufflepuffs had told him many stories about meeting professors in the kitchens. It was one of the reasons Hufflepuff’s score remained so low.
Suer pulled back his foot and quickly surveyed his surroundings. There was nowhere at all to conceal himself.
The footsteps drew nearer. Around the bend of the staircase, he could already see the edge of a wizard’s robes.
With no other choice, Suer pressed himself into the shadows beneath the stairs and prayed the professor would not glance toward that corner.
He held his breath and made himself as small as possible. In the dim firelight, he saw an elderly professor approaching with a limp. One of the man’s two arms shone with the grain of polished wood, and a hook at its end supported a tin bucket.
The bucket swung back and forth with every uneven step.
Was that Professor Kettleburn?
Splat.
A bloody lump of meat flew out of the bucket and landed close to Suer.
Suer’s heart tightened. Professor Kettleburn stopped, looked at the fallen meat, and put down the bucket.
If the professor raised his head while bending over, he would see Suer immediately.
Fortunately, Professor Kettleburn merely caught the lump of meat with the hook at the end of his wooden arm, tossed it back into the tin bucket, picked the bucket up in the same motion, and turned away.
Only when Professor Kettleburn’s stooped back had limped and swayed out through the castle doors did Suer emerge from the shadows, his expression peculiar.
Was he simply lucky, or had something about Professor Kettleburn’s behaviour been strange?
His movements were strange, and so was his expression. He had looked remarkably… serene? Suer could find no better word for it.
He soon cast the question aside. Hogwarts was full of peculiar people. A little inexplicable behaviour was nothing unusual.
Suer rubbed his arms. The Scottish Highlands were bitterly cold at night. What he needed now was the soft, warm bed waiting in the Hufflepuff dormitory.
Just as he was about to crawl through the opening revealed by the revolving barrels, a loud succession of crashes and clatters rang out clearly above his head.
It sounded as though something had toppled over.
What was that?
Perhaps Peeves was responsible. Suer had encountered the castle’s most mischievous ghost more than once over the past few days, and many older students had stories about falling victim to his pranks.
Suer shook his head, climbed expertly into the barrel passage, and hurried back toward his dormitory. At that moment, there was only one thing that mattered–sleep.
Otherwise, he was certain to suffer a disaster in the first Potions lesson after sunrise.
No young wizard had ever dared fall asleep in Snape’s class.