Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent

A week later, though, Harry was pleased to see a really large snake as they approached Hagrid’s hut for class. They had moved on from very small snakes to very large; evidently, Hagrid did not believe in medium-sized snakes.

“Come on!” he said to them as they approached what appeared to be a large glass-walled room with no roof in what had been the goose-yard. “Professor Dumbledore made this fer me ter keep the boa constrictor in, so’s it can’t hurt no one.”

Malfoy looked skeptically at the glass enclosure. “And we’re supposed to learn about the care of this snake by looking at it through glass, hmm?” he drawled.

“Well--” Hagrid hemmed and hawed.

“Can I go in?” Harry asked. “You know--to talk with it?”

“Well--” Hagrid said again. Malfoy looked annoyed that Harry might seem to be braver than him, volunteering to go into the enclosure with the boa constrictor. Harry assumed that Hagrid was reluctant because another thing Harry had done with the smaller snakes was ask them how they liked it at Hogwarts, and they’d all been unanimous that they hated it; it was too cold, they didn’t like the food and the owls flying about gave them the willies. Harry had suggested to Hagrid that he change their diet and find a way to keep them warmer and also to shield them from the owls, and Hagrid had been rather annoyed about all of the extra work that this created for him. Now Hagrid seemed worried that Harry was going to find a way to make still more work for him to accommodate the whims of this snake. As much as he liked Harry, he didn’t seem very happy to have a Parselmouth in the class.

“Please let him, Hagrid?” Hermione pleaded with Hagrid. “What if he finds out something really interesting?”

Hagrid grimaced; between the two of them he was hard pressed to refuse. “All right’, all right’. Fer jes’ a minute.”

Harry looked over at Malfoy and gave him a smirk before going to the door, which Hagrid unlocked for him. He stepped in slowly, not wanting to alarm the snake. Harry remembered the very civilized conversation he’d had with a boa constrictor in the zoo when he was not quite eleven, before he knew he was a wizard. The snake had told him it had never been to Brazil. Then Harry had unintentionally made the glass disappear that confined the snake, and it had seen his cousin Dudley. Dudley looked like lunch. Harry had tried many times since then not to wish that Dudley had been the boa’s lunch that day, but it was sometimes difficult. Harry realized that he hadn’t had that thought for some time, now that he and Dudley had become friends--and then he remembered that he was going to write to Dudley at school, and he’d been at school for seven weeks without once writing to him. He should do that later.

But right now, he wanted to pay close attention to the snake. When he entered the glass enclosure, it lifted its head and looked at him, expressionless, and Harry tried not to think how much it looked like Voldemort. He was aware of the Slytherins and the other Gryffindors watching through the glass. His heart began to thump very loudly in his chest; he realized that he’d never actually been near a snake this large before, other than Voldemort’s snake; it was even bigger than the one Malfoy had conjured during the dueling club in second year (although, come to think of it, Snape had whispered something in Malfoy’s ear right before he’d conjured the snake...). Harry shook his head. He needed to concentrate.

“Hello,” he hissed at the snake. It still gazed fixedly at him. “My name is Harry Potter. Do you have a name?”

“What is a name?” the snake hissed back, uncoiling and advancing across the enclosure toward him.

Great, thought Harry. I have to explain this again. He’d already explained it to all of the other snakes Hagrid had brought to class. It was getting a bit old.

“Never mind. Listen, I have a snake who’s a friend of mine, and she told me that snakes have the Sight. Have you had any glimpses of the future?”

The snake stopped moving toward him, for which Harry was grateful. It looked like it might be thinking. “Many will go, but few will stay,” it hissed.

“Many will go, but few will stay,” Harry whispered to himself. What did it mean? And how far into the future could a snake this size See? He asked it.

“Moons...” it hissed as thought sleepy. Harry decided that it must mean months.

“How many moons?” he wanted to know.

But it merely said, “Moons...” again, over and over. Well, thought Harry, that must mean more than one. So, a minimum of two months. Then he asked it about how it liked Hogwarts, as he had done with the other snakes. He’d done this so that he could tell Hagrid and the others something that had been said; he still wasn’t interested in divulging that snakes had the Sight. He preferred it to remain his secret.

He stepped out of the enclosure when Hagrid had unlocked it again and informed Hagrid of what the snake said it wanted to eat. When they were on their way to Herbology afterward, Hagrid called after them, “And exactly where, Harry, am I supposed to get an ocelot?”

Harry tried to ask the boa about the future again on Thursday when they once more had Care of Magical Creatures. This snake seemed to be a little more informative than the smaller ones, but he would have liked knowing how many months into the future it was seeing, and what it meant by Many will go, but few will stay. The second time he tried getting something out of the snake it gave him a different prophecy.

“The masters will be servants and the servants will be masters.”

Harry repeated what it had said, and wrote it on all of his notes in every class he had for the rest of the day. What did the things mean that the snake had said? he wondered. He could hope that perhaps the first prediction meant that Hagrid’s mother’s friends would come initially, but most of them would go. Then he realized that their going might mean their joining Voldemort--okay, so he didn’t hope that. This was confusing. Snake predictions were so strange and vague. Some Sight, Harry thought. They all needed spectacles for their Inner Eye, he decided.

Ginny had stopped coming running with him and Hermione in the morning. It was getting colder as Halloween approached, and they had taken to doing their running around the large Great Hall early on, before breakfast. They didn’t really talk at that time, and when they were with Ron (which they were at all other times) they tried to be normal with each other, but Harry could tell that Ron still was on edge about their friendship being so changed.

Harry had been doing extra work on potions, as he’d said he would, and when he did, he frequently encountered Draco Malfoy and Ginny there, and sometimes Neville, too. He tried to keep an eye on Malfoy and Ginny without making it seem that that was what he was doing. Their interaction (when he was around, anyway) seemed fairly innocuous, but he was still suspicious of what might go on when no one else was in the dungeon. He tried to ask Colin Creevey about Ginny, in an oblique way, so he wouldn’t get suspicious. He learned that Ginny was always with the other fourth years, when she wasn’t in the common room or the potions dungeon. There didn’t seem to be any times when her whereabouts were unaccounted for, times when she could possibly be meeting Draco Malfoy on the sly. Harry hoped Colin was right. He dreaded something happening between her and Malfoy, and then Ron finding out that Harry had known something. He’d be liable to kill Harry first before going after Malfoy...

On Saturday he and Hermione would be having another date in Hogsmeade with Viktor Krum and Cho Chang. He had also had to make time to spend with Cho Chang, walking through the corridors holding her hand, as he’d seen her doing with Cedric the previous year, or, a few times, meeting down at the greenhouses to kiss a little. He tried to cut these sessions short as much as possible, feeling guilty for several reasons all at once: he didn’t want to lead Cho on any more than absolutely necessary; he felt (although she had pushed him into it) that he was being unfaithful to Hermione; and, sometimes, he found himself actually enjoying it a little, making him think of what Ginny had said. I’ll be glad when this is over, he thought repeatedly. They were going to an opera performance in the village on Saturday. Viktor had gotten tickets to a matinee of Dido and Aeneas, performed by a company of witches and wizards that were evidently world famous. It was a traveling production. Hermione informed him excitedly that there were witches and wizards in it (characters), and that he needn’t worry about not being able to understand, although it was an opera. It was written in English.

She told Harry some more about it while he and Ron played chess in the common room. “It’s got some really beautiful arias and choruses. When Queen Dido sings her death aria...”

“Hermione!” Harry groaned. “You’ve just told me that one of the title characters dies.”

Ron shrugged. “It’s an opera. Probably everybody dies.”

“No,” said Harry, thinking of the essay he’d written for Moody. “That’s Hamlet. In operas, I thought it was just the people you like best who die. To punish you for going.”

Hermione scowled. “I saw a really amazing production of Aida in Greece last summer...”

Ron rolled his eyes. “Just when we thought you couldn’t get nerdier. Prefect and opera buff...” but he stopped short when he saw the hurt look on Hermione’s face and made a hasty move that resulted in Harry taking his bishop (Harry’s knight clubbed the bishop on the head and dragged him off the board).

Before class on Wednesday Harry had sent a letter to Dudley by owl post, and when he went upstairs to the common room after classes were done for the week on Friday, Hedwig was waiting for him with a reply.

Dear Harry,

Thanks for writing. But next time, send Hedwig at night. I’ll keep my window open. My roommate doesn’t mind. Hedwig showed up in the middle of my biology class. We were getting these white mice to run through this big cardboard maze and seeing whose mouse would get to the cheese in the middle first. Mine was pretty lame. Then when Hedwig came flying in , she thought it was a buffet or something. All those mice! You should have heard the screaming and seen the blood flying. She was cool! I acted like the big owl-expert and led her out of the lab. The professor never noticed she had a letter attached to her leg. I took her up to my room and gave her another mouse I nicked on the way out. She seemed pretty happy.

How’s Hermione? When’s she going to write? I included a letter for her too. DON’T OPEN IT! I’m still running. I’ve started lifting weights, too. Everything’s okay, but I think my roommate’s stealing from me. I haven’t caught him yet, though.

Tell Hermione to write to me!

--Dudley

Harry gave Hermione her letter while Ron frowned and tried to read over her shoulder. She held it against her chest, not letting him. Ron went off in a huff, and Harry asked her what was the big deal. She laughed.

“Nothing. I’m just trying to wind him up.”

Harry looked at Ron’s retreating back. “It’s working.” What, he wondered, would have happened if Ron had caught them in the Charms classroom--either time? Then he decided he didn’t want to think about that after all. He remembered when Ron wouldn’t talk to him, almost exactly a year ago, after his name had come out of the Goblet of Fire. Ron had refused to believe that Harry hadn’t put his own name in until after the first task, when he had flown on his broom to get past the Hungarian Horntail, the most fearsome of the four dragons selected for the champions to face. He didn’t want to lose his best friend again. Maybe Ron was the one they should be fixing up--but then he remembered what a disaster it had been to fix him up with Padma Patil for the Yule Ball. All Ron had noticed that night was Hermione. Hermione with Viktor Krum. Hermione looking more beautiful than she’d ever looked before. And although Harry knew this, at the time he had taken merely an academic interest in it; his main focus had been Cho Chang, much to Parvati’s chagrin. He was glad he had finally apologized to her.

Harry wrote another letter to Dudley, asking Hermione whether she wanted to send a letter of her own along with it.

“Sure. I’ve got some Arithmancy to do, but I can write a short note to Dudley first. Sounds like Hedwig made quite a splash in his biology class.” Harry smiled and agreed. Then he realized he’d been looking fixedly at her for a full minute, and looked away, reddening. He glanced back at her, seeing a rosy glow on her cheeks as well, as she dug in her bag for a blank piece of parchment. He knew he’d been thinking about those two times in the Charms classroom; he she been thinking about that, too? he wondered.

After dinner, the common room emptied out a little at a time. Finally, only Harry, Ron, Ginny, Hermione and the twins were still in the room. The twins were discussing future plans for the half of the Triwizard Tournament money their dad had invested for them. Ron and Ginny were playing chess, with Harry watching. She was the only one he’d ever seen beat Ron at chess, and he was determined to figure out how she was doing it. He watched her as she played, her glowing hair falling in her face at times, which she pushed impatiently behind her ears. A determined look was in her deep brown eyes, two little lines forming between her brows when she was frowning, deep in thought. After a while, Harry forgot he was trying to discern her chess strategy, he was so fascinated by looking at her. But then she looked up and caught his eye. She got an angry scowl on her face, her lips went into a straight line. Harry looked back at the board. Why should she be mad at him for looking at her? he thought. He didn’t dare look up at her again for a while.

Hermione had a sudden thought, and looked up from her Arithmancy work. “Harry! Look at the time. Weren’t you going to send that letter to Dudley?”

He walked over to where she was working. “Yeah, but I thought I’d do it later. I can just use the Invisibility Cloak to avoid being caught by Filch. I don’t want Hedwig showing up at Smeltings again when there are a lot of people awake to see her.”

She nodded. “Good idea.”

Just then, Ginny cried, “Checkmate! Good try, Ron. Better luck next time.”

Ron stared at the board. “But how--what--?”

Ginny pointed. “Your king is stuck, see? If he stays there, my rook gets him, and if he moves to any of the spaces around him, he’s caught by my queen, bishops or knights. And your lot can’t get any of mine.” Ron still stared, dumbfounded. Harry wished he’d seen the last few moves she’d made to accomplish this rout. She just amazed him more every day.

Ron began putting the chess pieces away, then failed to stifle a huge yawn. “I think I’d better get upstairs before I fall asleep on the chess board and wake up with angry pawns stuck to my face.” Ginny said goodnight to them all and went up the stairs. She gave Harry a funny look just before disappearing. What was that? Harry thought. Had she gone completely in the opposite direction, from having a crush on him to hating him? Had Draco Malfoy poisoned her mind against him?

The twins and Ron both went up the stairs, and Harry followed them, saying good night to Hermione, still bent over her work.

“Good night,” she said distractedly, not looking at him. He went up to his dormitory and changed into his pajama pants and laid down on top of his covers, pulling the curtains closed around him. As he waited for the time to pass, he fingered the basilisk amulet resting on his bare chest, wondering what exactly he would do if Ginny turned against him and her whole family and...became Dark. It gave him a dreadful, empty feeling in his chest, like when he first saw Cedric after he was killed, feeling responsible, feeling helpless and alone...

Finally, Harry felt it was late enough. He had dozed off for a little while, then jerked himself awake, continuing to wait. He heard Neville snoring, and Ron mumbling in his sleep. Seamus and Dean were pretty quiet sleepers, but he thought he heard rustling as one of them turned over in bed. He opened his bedcurtains and went to his trunk, removing his invisibility cloak. He put on his dressing gown and tied the belt, carrying the cloak under his arm and remembering to slip his wand into his pocket, as a safety measure. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he was momentarily taken aback; there was someone in an armchair near the fire.

“Took you long enough, Harry,” Hermione said, peering around the wing of the chair, smiling. He sighed with relief. She stood. “How exactly were you going to mail your letter and mine when I’ve got both of them still?” she said, not making fun of him exactly, but coming pretty close, Harry felt. But then she smiled again, and Harry had to smile too. She was dressed for bed, in a knee-length night shirt that buttoned down the front and a pink chenille dressing gown and matching fuzzy slippers. He had simply slipped his feet into his sneakers without socks, not owning a pair of slippers. The Dursleys thought of such things as frills (as far as he was concerned, not for themselves) and he frankly hadn’t thought of purchasing such things when he’d actually had a few pounds for doing the landscaping.

“I supposed you want to come along,” he said lightly.

“Well, it has been a while since we’ve been skulking around in the middle of the night. And now that we’re prefects, we could claim to be patrolling or something.”

“Yes, patrolling without being asked, and wearing an Invisibility Cloak. That’s really plausible.”

She walked toward the portrait hole, laughing. “Come on. Before I lose my nerve.” They climbed out and closed the portrait, then put the cloak over themselves. They walked closely together up to the Owlery, Harry trying not to think about how they’d been avoiding being alone. They’d gone around together under the cloak loads of times in the past, and for reasons that were far more dangerous than mailing a couple of letters. But now they’d had the Charms classroom encounters....

They reached the Owlery without incident. Harry took the cloak off the two of them and tied the letters to Hedwig’s leg and sent her on her way. He remembered when he had been there with Ginny, sending the note to Cho, how Ginny had tried to imply that she was over him and had then been crying on Draco Malfoy’s chest because she’d seen him kissing Cho Chang. He turned from the window to smile at Hermione, somehow feeling that in some ways, she was one of the least complicated parts of his life right now. He felt happy when he was with her, and she seemed to feel the same; he didn’t know what he felt about Ginny, or she about him, and he knew unequivocally that he didn’t feel anything for Cho. He knew that in some ways the most complicated thing he could do to his life was to be with Hermione, but he tried not to think about Ron and Viktor Krum and Voldemort.

They put the cloak back on to go downstairs. This time, Harry put his right arm around her shoulder to bring her closer to him and, not looking at him, she put her left arm around his waist. Then, they turned a corner and saw--Mrs. Norris. She walked right toward them, her eyes glowing as if she could see them (Harry had yet to determine whether Mrs. Norris could see through Invisibility Cloaks, like Mad Eye Moody). They pressed themselves against a wall and watched her pass, and before she was past them completely, she turned her head and seemed to look directly at them. They started to move again after she was gone around a corner, when, to their horror, Filch appeared at the end of the corridor. He was brandishing a mop, looking as though he was in fact trying to ferret out people wearing Invisibility Cloaks, swinging it around in the corridor wildly. Harry’s heart was thudding in his chest so hard that it hurt. If he kept that up, when he reached them the mop would definitely make contact with them. On the other hand, Harry was afraid that moving away from Filch down the corridor would produce noise. He turned and looked down at Hermione, in case she had any brilliant suggestions for what to do now.

Suddenly there was a noise of a suit of armor crashing, most likely falling to bits from the sound of the racket. Filch whirled, brandishing the mop in front of him. He went running, presumably in the direction of the armor-noise. Harry heaved a sigh of relief. He and Hermione were able to proceed to the portrait-hole without further incident.

Once in the common room again, Hermione flopped back in the armchair by the fire where he’d found her. She put her hand over her heart, trying to get her breath. “Harry,” she said slowly, “I’m think I’m getting too old for this...”

Harry laughed, sitting on the hearthrug and leaning against the front of her chair. Her legs were beside his shoulder. She kicked off her slippers and held her bare feet out to the fire, warming them. It was getting a bit drafty in the castle to be walking about without socks on at night. He turned and looked, thinking, Even her feet are pretty. He reached out without thought and touched her foot with his hand, stroking the top, forgetting it was attached to her, simply following the line with his finger, up to her ankle and back to her toes. But Hermione was not able to behave as though it wasn’t attached to her; she shuddered and leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes and sighing. Harry looked up at her, then decided, Okay, she likes that. He used both his hands now, caressing and stroking her feet, while she gripped the arms of the chair and sighed again, her eyes still closed. He smiled. He was driving her crazy and loving every minute of it. She had very sensitive feet...

Then she started moving. She stood up and then took a step forward, sitting down on the floor in the front of the chair, next to him, also leaning against the chair. Harry put his arm around her shoulder again, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, his cheek on the top of her head.

At first, he didn’t notice her hand on his leg, tracing lazy circles, then he became acutely aware of it, wishing that she would stop and that she would never stop. He thought he was going insane (clearly she thought it was her turn to drive him crazy). He lifted his head and looked down at her, finding her looking up at him. He remembered being in the garden when Sirius had come, their mouths moving closer and closer, and then Sandy speaking...but this time, Sandy said nothing, wrapped around his arm under his dressing gown, and their lips touched briefly, tentatively, before Harry spasmodically clutched at her and held her face up to his, and she pulled him to her, her fingers entwined in his hair, both of them forgetting any reason not to do this, any reason to show restraint.

Harry broke the kiss, but only to move his mouth down her neck, to duck under her chin and run his tongue down her throat, to hear that moaning sound again she’d made in the Charms classroom. Her hand went to the belt of his dressing gown, he felt her hands on his chest, then her lips, tracing a moist trail down to his stomach, making his abdominal muscles flinch. He gasped at the sensation, then brought her face up to his again, holding her tightly, desperately. His fingers deftly undid the buttons down the front of her nightshirt, her hand went to the drawstring on his pajama pants. Harry felt he was drowning in her, and didn’t want to be saved, couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful in the world than to sink down into this whirlpool called Hermione...

“A ram will meet a dragon,” said Sandy suddenly. Damn! Harry thought. He was seriously reconsidering the wisdom of having a snake. Harry raised his head and listened; Hermione didn’t notice at first, kissing his shoulder, caressing the sensitive skin on his back. What could Sandy mean? he wondered. Who was going to meet whom? But he did know one thing; whatever was going to happen, it was going to be in the immediate vicinity, and if they weren’t careful, they would be caught. She finally noticed that he was no longer touching or kissing her; she looked at him, perplexed. He seemed to be listening intently to the large empty room around them.

“Harry? What’s wrong?”

He swallowed and looked at her. She was so beautiful in the firelight, her cheeks flushed and her curls askew. “Button your shirt and tie your dressing gown. We need to get into separate chairs. Someone’s coming.” He rose and put his dressing gown on his shoulders again and seated himself in a chair a couple of feet away from the one she’d been sitting in. She frowned, looking as she had in the garden on Privet Drive again. She buttoned up her nightshirt. (Harry’s hands had been inside it; he tried not to think about it, with a shiver.) Then she tied her dressing gown belt and put her slippers on again, sitting in the chair with her legs drawn up once more. Harry hadn’t bothered to tie his dressing gown; he was very warm, and Hermione looked at him, at his bare chest with the basilisk amulet showing, and he thought she made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat.

“Are you going to explain this to me or not, Harry Potter?” Uh oh, he thought. I’m in trouble. Full name.

“Like I said. Someone’s coming.”

She opened her mouth to say something--probably about him having the Sight, he thought--when Ginny appeared at the bottom of the stairs leading to the girls’ dormitories. She stopped short at seeing Harry and Hermione sitting in the armchairs by the fire.

“Ginny!” Hermione said, surprised. Harry was too, but then he thought about it. He remembered George and Fred talking about her birthday being April first; that made her an Aries, the sign of the ram. Sandy had called Parvati a fish because she was a Pisces...But there wasn’t any sign of the zodiac that had a dragon for a symbol...

Harry opened his eyes wide. Dragon. He knew who it was. He scrambled to his feet, his dressing gown swinging. “Hermione! Take Ginny back upstairs! Now!”

Hermione furrowed her brow and rose, too slowly for Harry’s taste, but he bit his tongue to keep from barking at her, to keep from telling her to get a move on. Ginny protested.

“What? I don’t have to--”

“Yes you do,” Harry said sternly. “We’re prefects. You have to listen to us. Go. I’ll talk to him.”

Hermione swung her head around. “Talk to who?”

Ginny widened her eyes, panicked that Harry would say. He shook his head at her to reassure her. “Never mind. Just take her. Go. And make sure she can’t get downstairs until morning. Use whatever binding spell you have to, I don’t care. Do what you did to Peeves...”

“Harry, you know I can’t--”

“Just get her out of here!” he finally lost it. Both girls looked at him strangely. Ginny set her jaw defiantly as Hermione grabbed her arm and dragged her back up the stairs with her. When he heard doors closing up in the girls’ dorms, he went over to the portrait hole and opened it, knowing who he would see waiting in the corridor.

It was Draco Malfoy.

“Potter!”

“Malfoy,” Harry said, trying to keep his voice even, to not let rage make his voice shake. “Get in here now, before Filch comes by.”

At the mention of Filch, he scrambled in and Harry closed the portrait again.

“What’s going on?” Malfoy demanded to know.

“You’ve got some nerve, Malfoy. I should be asking you that. I had Hermione take Ginny back up to her room. You’re not meeting her tonight, or any night. Are you out of your mind? Are you trying to get her in trouble?” Harry stopped, wishing he hadn’t used that turn of phrase.

“We were just going to go someplace to talk. We never get to be alone to talk. Whenever we’re in the Potions Dungeon either you or Longbottom or both are there. We haven’t been able to talk alone in a couple of weeks.”

“Why do you need to talk to her alone?” Harry wanted to know. He felt incredibly close to committing murder.

“I don’t need to--well, okay, maybe I do--I--I want to--” he trailed off. He frowned at Harry. “You’re not one of her brothers.”

“No, and you should thank your lucky stars for that, because any one of them would be happy to pull your intestines out through your ears right now. And that’s without knowing that you were planning to sneak around with Ginny in the middle of the night.”

Malfoy’s jaw was set. “Listen, I know that my family and Ginny’s family have bad blood between them, but I would never do anything to hurt her. I--look, I don’t exactly feel comfortable talking to you of all people about how I feel about Ginny. Do you think I planned this? A Weasley? Don’t you think I tried to talk myself out of this? But--” and he looked up at the ceiling, his mouth in a line.

“You don’t have to tell me that Ginny’s a great girl. I know that. She may not think I know, but I do,” Harry said, remembering Malfoy telling her that Harry wasn’t worth her obsessing over since he’d ignored her for three years. “But if you’ve got some romantic notion about the two of you being Romeo and Juliet, get rid of it right now. Romeo and Juliet had it easy compared to you two, and look what happened to them.” Malfoy grimaced, silently acknowledging that Harry was right (but not willing to say so). “This isn’t the time or place to discuss it. I want you to promise me that you’ll be content with seeing her in the Potions Dungeon for now. Promise?” Malfoy mumbled a reluctant affirmative. “Good. Now wait here. I have to go get something.”

Malfoy frowned but stayed where he was. Harry ran up the stairs to his dorm and then reappeared in a moment with a piece of parchment. He put it on a table, and when Malfoy started to approach him, he pulled out his wand and pointed it at him. “Back off, Malfoy. Stay over there. You don’t need to see this. In fact, turn around.” Malfoy stood his ground and they glared at each other. Harry was not going to look away first. Finally, Malfoy grimaced again and turned his back to Harry. Harry waved his wand over the parchment.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

The map of Hogwarts appeared on the parchment, and Harry was quickly able to locate the dots in the Gryffindor common room with the minuscule labels Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. There were also some tiny dots in the Trophy Room labeled Ernest MacMillan and Hannah Abbott. Harry grinned; All right, Ernie and Hannah! But then he thought of Hermione and shook himself. There; he’d found what he was looking for. In the entrance hall was a dot labeled Argus Filch. He waved his wand over the parchment again, saying, “Mischief managed,” and rolled it up and put it in the pocket of his dressing gown. He walked back over to Malfoy.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “When you’re going back, avoid the entrance hall. That’s where Filch is. And also, don’t go in the Trophy Room; you might, ah, disturb some people there...”

“How do you know?” Malfoy said suspiciously.

“I just do. I know you don’t want to trust me, but you don’t have a choice.” They glared at each other again, then Malfoy actually let out a laugh.

“If anyone had told me that I’d ever be standing here talking to you in the middle of the night....All right. Avoid the entrance hall. I almost got caught by Filch once tonight. I totaled a suit of armor on the third floor and I heard him come running...”

Harry laughed now. “That was you? I should thank you. Filch had almost walked right into me and Hermione coming back from mailing a couple of letters to my cousin. That collapsing armor created just the diversion we needed.”

Malfoy’s eyebrows shot up. “Granger? So there is something between you two? Wait--you said that she took Ginny back up to her dorm. You two were down here, weren’t you? When Ginny came downstairs.” He eyed Harry shrewdly. “Ruined your night, did I?” He looked down at Harry’s pajama pants. “Your pants are untied. Did you do it or did she? And did she give you this?” He reached out and picked up the basilisk from Harry’s chest. Harry knocked his hand away.

“As a matter of fact, that was a birthday gift from Ginny.” He challenged Malfoy with his eyes to say anything about that. “I think you should leave now before Filch moves on to another part of the castle,” he said evenly, making a great effort to remain in control. But Malfoy wasn’t done.

“You’re being so self-righteous, so high and mighty about me and Ginny, and here you are with Granger on the hearthrug in the middle of the night...”

Harry couldn’t take it any longer; he pushed Malfoy up against the wall and spoke with his mouth very close to his face. “Nothing happened. You don’t know anything.”

Malfoy pushed him off. “Harry Potter, hypocrite. Some things never change, do they? Nothing happened because Ginny and I interrupted you, and that’s probably the only reason. I can’t believe you...”

“This is different,” Harry hissed. “And you have to remember: Ginny’s a year younger than us. You--you have to have self-control--” Harry couldn’t go on. He was shaking. The thought of Malfoy and Ginny doing anything remotely similar to what he and Hermione had been doing was making him feel ill.

To his surprise, Malfoy nodded. “I know that. I would never...you may not believe me, but she is safe with me. Really.” Harry looked at him, never remembering Malfoy sounding so straightforward and sincere.

“All right. Like I said, this isn’t the time or place. You’d better go. Avoid the entrance hall.”

“Right,” Malfoy said, opening the portrait and climbing through the hole. “But not because of Filch. He’s a pussycat compared to Snape.”

“Snape? Are you kidding? As far as he’s concerned, no one in his house can do anything wrong.”

“Hmph. That’s only how he acts around students from other houses. If any of us gets points taken from our house...You don’t want to know. And he’s a pussycat compared to my dad.”

“Now that I believe,” Harry said, shuddering.

“Yeah. I’m glad Moody’s planning to teach us how to cope with the Cruciatus Curse. Then maybe when I upset my dad, he won’t know I can’t feel what he’s doing...”

Harry dropped his jaw. “Your dad put the Cruciatus Curse on you?”

“No, you idiot. But there are plenty of legal curses that are still--extremely painful.” He had been looking at Harry, but now looked away; he’d said too much. He decided to change the subject. “So; how far’d you get with Granger?”

“Don’t push it, Malfoy. I’m not talking to you about Hermione. Do you want me to get all of Ginny’s brothers down here? Plus, there’s plenty of other guys in Gryffindor who be pleased to scalp you for what you’re thinking about Ginny--I didn’t say actually doing, just thinking. And if you deny that you’ve thought stuff, you must really think I’m stupid.”

Malfoy grinned. “Nah. That one’s too easy. I’m not even gonna touch it. Like candy from a baby.” He turned before closing the portrait. “So; we each have a secret the other one knows about.”

“Looks that way.”

“Well, Potter, I have to admit...Granger. I don’t exactly blame you.”

Now Harry had to really restrain himself from hitting Malfoy. It took all the effort he could muster.

“And Ginny,” said Harry softly. “I don’t blame you, either.”

Malfoy nodded and closed the portrait; no goodnight, thanks, or anything else. Harry heard his retreating footsteps, then went over to sit in an armchair near the fire again. He looked at the lion on the keystone. In the flickering light it almost seemed to be moving. He closed his eyes and remembered being with Hermione again, by the fire...But that wasn’t helping his peace of mind a bit. He fingered the basilisk amulet as he walked up the stairs to his dorm.