Harry Potter and the Slytherin Spy

Harry Potter and the Slytherin Spy

Christine Morgan

Chapter Seventeen - The Liquipurging Elixir

For a moment, there in the dungeon level Potions classroom, nobody moved. They all stood stock-still, rooted to the spot.

Goyle coughed again, a thick, gargling sound like he was choking on a throatful of oatmeal and pebbles. His face had gone the color of an underripe plum, red-purple and swollen. His mouth gaped wider than seemed humanly possible, revealing every last one of his poorly-cared-for teeth. His eyes were squeezed into slits, watering.

He hacked again, a dredging, swampy sound, and a grapefruit-sized stringy glob of yellow mucus splattered out of his mouth. Some of it struck Blaise Zabini, who leaped sideways with a high, revolted cry.

That broke the room-wide paralysis, and everyone was scrambling over stools and around tables to get further away from Goyle. In the panic, several mortars went over, spilling opals and kicking up puffs of iridescent greenish dust. Harry wasn't the only one to hold his breath in hopes of avoiding inhaling the dust, and Neville went a step better by burying his nose and mouth in the crook of his elbow.

"Hhhaaahhrrch!" Goyle hacked again, then sucked in a thin, whistling breath. He clung to the edge of his table as a violent coughing fit wracked his body.

"What's the matter with him?" Pansy shrieked.

Snape pushed toward Goyle, slowed by the press of bodies trying to go in the opposite direction.

Goyle convulsed, bending double. He heaved. A horrible retching noise was followed by a chunky gush of partially-digested breakfast. It splashed across the table and streamed over the edges. More people screamed, Neville among them.

"... hhhelp!" gasped Goyle, looking pleadingly up at Snape with vomit dripping from his chin. "My ... stomaaaaachhh!"

He threw up again, a tidal wave of it. This time the vomit was loose and watery, with no recognizable food bits. Snape's face twisted alarmingly and he sidestepped the torrent, sweeping the hem of his robes up and away.

"Opal dust does this?" someone cried.

Goyle tottered three steps toward Snape, now trying to cover his mouth with one hand while the other clutched at his gut. Pressure jets of liquid shot between his fingers. His hand wasn't big enough to cover his grossly distended mouth. His eyes bulged in pain and horror.

"This is not the effect of breathing opal dust," Snape said after waving his wand at Goyle in a frantic, futile gesture.

Harry thought of the Puking Pastilles, one of the specialties of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. But this far exceeded anything he'd seen from Fred and George. This was no harmless regurgitation to get out of a boring class. Goyle had emptied the contents of his stomach and was still throwing up. Not dry-heaving, either ... bile and less identifiable fluids were being expelled with each strangled, gagging seizure.

"Zabini!" barked Snape. "Go get Madame Pomfrey. On the double! Malfoy, a Antitoxicus Draught, in the left hand cupboard, quick!"

"Antitoxicus?" Pansy echoed. "He's been poisoned?"

Blaise ran for the door and Malfoy for the cupboard. Snape tried to get close to Goyle, but as he reached out, Goyle reeled back the other way, stumbled over a fallen stool, went to his hands and knees, and sprayed another gout. It was hot and dark and streaked with arterial red. He was vomiting blood, tearing his insides apart with the shredding force of his internal convulsions.

"Now, Malfoy!" shouted Snape.

Malfoy yanked open the left hand cupboard and raked through neat rows of potion bottles on the shelves. They tumbled out, shattering on the floor around his feet in seething clouds and tendrils of multi-colored smoke.

Goyle thumped down on his side, curled partway into a fetal position. More red-streaked fluid, seemingly gallons of it, surged from his canyonesque mouth. It drenched Snape as Snape bent over him.

Hannah Abbott and Pansy Parkinson fainted. Neville swayed on his feet as if about to follow suit. Parvati's sister Padma whirled away and threw up into the nearest cauldron. So did Ernie Macmillan. Everyone else broke and fled, out the door that Blaise had left standing wide open.

"Here!" Malfoy called, racing back with an Antitoxicus Draught grasped firmly in his hand. He gave it to Snape.

Heedless of the blood and noxious mess soaking his robes, Snape bent over Goyle and uncorked the vial. But Goyle was still vomiting too severely, too constantly, for him to be able to pour the potion down his throat. Harry thought again of Fred and George, who'd had just such a problem with the Puking Pastilles.

A truly impossible geyser erupted from Goyle. It shot five feet into the air and rained down in a pinkish-grey shower that stank like a slaughterhouse.

Harry realized that Goyle was, in the most literal possible sense, puking his guts out. Somehow, his internal organs were liquefying, and he was vomiting them up, along with gallons of his own blood and bodily fluids.

He remembered having once heard somewhere - from Hermione, more than likely - that the human body was more than eighty percent water. And Goyle was expelling every ounce of it. His limbs and torso looked shrunken, shriveled, as if he was being dehydrated before their very eyes.

With his features contorted and his mouth stretched so wide that it took up his entire face, Goyle hardly looked human. He looked instead like one of the gargoyles on the outer wall, the water-spewing gargoyles that served as decorative spouts at the ends of the long pipes and rain gutters.

Snape flicked his wand. "Immobilus!"

Goyle's convulsions stopped. He was rigid, on his back. Locked in an agonized pose with his mouth agape so far it seemed the tendons in his jaw must have snapped. His eyes were stark with panic. And still, from deep inside him, came sloshing, churning noises. Goyle's innards sounded like an over-sudsed washing machine.

His mouth brimmed, and overflowed at the corners. Snape cursed vehemently, unable to pour the potion in when it would merely run right out. He braced his foot on Goyle's shoulder and pushed him over onto his side.

The liquid in Goyle's mouth ran out, but did not empty. He kept flowing like a wellspring. Flowing and flowing. An awful awareness was in his eyes now. Breath bubbled in and out of his nostrils. His skin adhered tight to the bones of his arms and legs ... but now it appeared that his bones were melting as well. He was dissolving, dissolving from the inside out and vomiting up the entire substance of his body into a spreading lake on the floor.

Snape knelt, grabbed Goyle's chin, and did his best to pour the Antitoxicus Draught in past the outflowing current. He cursed again, using oaths so vile that Harry's ears popped, and dumped the rest of the vial over Goyle's face as if thinking that it might perhaps be absorbed into his desiccated flesh.

"Help him!" Malfoy howled. "You have to help him!"

"I'm trying," said Snape through gritted teeth.

Ernie and Padma stumbled from the room, Padma weeping and Ernie screaming like a little girl. Hannah, Pansy, and Neville lay in a heap - Harry wasn't sure exactly when Neville had fainted. Everyone else was long gone.

"What can we do?" Harry asked desperately. He couldn't stand seeing anyone die like this. Not even Goyle.

Snape only shook his head in a fevered desperation of his own.

Malfoy seized Goyle by the shoulders and leaned over him. "Greg!" he yelled down into Goyle's gape-jawed, distended face. "Hang on! Madame Pomfrey's coming. You'll be all right -"

Goyle had been staring straight up at Malfoy, eyes rolling like those of a hog on its way to the butcher's pen. All at once, they wrinkled up into dry little eyeball raisins and fell back into their sockets with twin plopping noises.

"Eeeyah!" Malfoy let go and sprang away, colliding with Harry. For a singularly bizarre instant, they clung to each other, their hateful enmity forgotten in the extremity of the horrible moment.

"No, damn it, no!" Snape roared.

He swept Goyle up in his arms - a feat that, had Goyle been his usual beefy self, Snape never could have hoped to have done ... a feat that was ridiculously easy now that Goyle weighed as much as a bundle of broom twigs - as if he intended to Apparate with him straight to the hospital wing. But how many times over the years had Hermione reminded Harry that it was impossible to Apparate or Disapparate within the Hogwarts grounds?

Every bit of moisture left in Goyle came out of him in a final gargling mist. What Snape was left with was a jointed bone-doll encased in leathery flesh and sodden robes.

A shuddering moan escaped Malfoy. "Is ... is he ..."

"Dead," Snape said, and set the remains on a table with a surprising degree of gentleness. He bowed his head over them, his lank hair falling in clumps around his jawline.

"Dead?" Malfoy repeated, like he'd never heard the word before. Then he shook himself, noticed that he was all but leaning on Harry, and jerked away with a furious, wordless outburst.

"What happened to him?" Harry asked. "What kind of poison would do something like that?"

A thunder of footsteps on the stairs heralded the arrival of Blaise Zabini and Madame Pomfrey. The school nurse took one look at the hideous mess in the dungeon room and went almost as white as her uniform robes. Blaise was panting, red-faced from the exertion of running all the way to the hospital wing and back.

"Oh, my stars," Madame Pomfrey said.

Snape recovered his wits. "Malfoy, Zabini, Potter," he said sharply, and pointed at the pile of bodies. "Get them out of here and shut the door, or we'll have the whole castle down here rubbernecking."

"Yes, sir," Harry said. He turned to the others. "I'll take Neville. Can you get Pansy and Hannah?"

Malfoy was still staring at what was left of Goyle. He looked completely lost, vulnerable, and alone. Harry's heart almost went out to him. Once again, he was astounded to find himself feeling sorry for Draco Malfoy.

"We'll get them," Blaise said, and snapped fingers in front of Malfoy's face. "Draco. Wake up, Draco."

"He's dead," Malfoy said.

"Yeah."

"They're both dead."

"Yeah," Blaise said again. "Get Pansy. I want out of here."

Harry used his wand to levitate Neville, eerily reminded of a time that Lupin had levitated an unconscious Snape. Neville bobbed upright, arms dangling, head lolling.

Over by the table, Madame Pomfrey was bent over Goyle. "I've never seen the like," she said to Snape. "What could have done this?"

"It must have been a Liquipurging Elixir," Snape said grimly. "I cannot think of anything else that would have such an effect."

"Liquipurging Elixir! Surely you do not keep that kind of poison here!"

"I do not," Snape said. "It is an illegal potion."

She pursed her lips as if to say that she knew full well Snape had a stockpile of illegal potions hidden about the dungeon. "Well, where did it come from?"

"We do not even know for certain that this is its work," he said. "But the only place I've ever seen it was in a shop in Knockturn Alley."

She gave him a disapproving look, which Snape ignored.

"I tried an Antitoxicus Draught," he went on, "but was unable to get him to ingest it. By then, it might have been too late anyway."

Blaise levitated Hannah, but as Malfoy was about to do the same with Pansy, it all caught up with him. His knees buckled, he groaned, and before either Harry or Blaise could catch him, he pitched face-down over Pansy in a dead faint.

"Bugger," Blaise said, looking at Harry.

It struck him that even here, close up and conversing, he couldn't tell if Blaise was a boy or a girl. A slim boy ... or a flatchested girl ... the voice perfectly middle-range.

"I'll get him," Harry said. Still with Neville floating like a balloon at the end of his wand, he hefted Malfoy up over his shoulder.

"Good job." Blaise nodded, and did the same with Pansy floating, and Hannah Abbott, who was considerably slighter than the full-figured Slytherin girl, in a fireman's carry.

They made their way slowly and clumsily through the disordered Potions classroom, mindful not to trip over stools or slip in the unthinkable liquid coursing in the cracks between the large flagstones.

No one was in the hall yet, and Harry supposed that was a good thing, though he and Blaise probably would have appreciated a little extra help with their burdens. He wondered where everyone else had gone when they'd fled the classroom, and why word hadn't gotten around.

"We'll go to our dormitory first," puffed Blaise. "It's nearest."

"Suits me," Harry said. Malfoy was heavier than he looked.

He had been to the Slytherin common room once before, but tried not to give any indication of that as he followed Blaise along the dungeon corridors. Inside, the sunken stone-walled chamber was lit by a multitude of green snake-shaped candles, their tongues made of flickering flame. The fireplace was stacked with wood but unlit, and shadows lurked in the high corners like dark spiderwebs.

No Slytherins were present, but their pets were. A black cat lounged insolently on a dragonleather sofa, coldly watching them with luminous yellow eyes. An albino cobra flared its hood and hissed a warning. A one-eyed owl shifted on its perch and gave a desultory hoot. A two-headed newt with sickly-looking grey spots scurried under a table as they came in.

Harry flopped Malfoy down on the sofa. His arm swung down, limp, knuckles brushing the nap of a tapestry rug showing basilisks and cockatrices hatching from eggs.

Blaise deposited Pansy in a deep chair, and lowered Hannah. "I need to rest for a minute."

"Sounds good to me," Harry said, sitting on a footstool and lowering Neville so that he no longer continued to bob, insensate, in the air.

"Strange, seeing you in here."

"I know what you mean."

They looked at each other for a long, thoughtful moment.

"Blaise?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you a boy or a girl?" It just, heaven help him, slipped out.

"Yes," Blaise said, and grinned diabolically.

"Yes? What kind of answer is that?"

"A true one."

"Well ... okay, but ..."

Just then, Malfoy revived with a thrashing shout that sent him spilling to the rug. "Huh! Ah! Son of a ..." He glanced around, befuddled, and then the surroundings clicked and he sat back, combing his fingers through his tangled pale blond hair. His gaze found Harry, and narrowed into twin piercing points. "You!"

"I think he's all right," Harry said dryly.

"Seems so," Blaise said.

"What are you doing here?" Malfoy demanded.

"Carried you," Harry said, resisting the urge to rub salt in the wound. Here was his chance for payback, his chance to get back at Malfoy for all of those humorous impressions he'd done of Harry fainting in terror at the sight of a dementor. Yet somehow, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Not with Goyle's death still fresh in their minds.

"The hell you did," Malfoy said angrily, sitting up. His gaze took in Pansy first, and then Hannah and Neville. For a moment, he seemed at a loss, and then recollection crashed in on him. Pain wrenched his face into a grimace.

"Greg ...?" he asked Blaise in a faltering tone. "He isn't ... not really ...?"

"Sorry, Draco."

Without another word, Malfoy shot to his feet, robes whirling around his legs. He headed for an arched doorway framed in nestles of stone serpents like the hair of Medusa, swept aside a curtain of dark green snakeskin patterned cloth, and entered a curving hallway. Blaise followed, and after a moment's indecision, Harry did too.

He saw at once that the Slytherins had quite different sleeping arrangements from those in Gryffindor tower. The long hall curved in a semi-circle and was lined with oaken doors. Torches in wrought-iron wall sconces shaped like gauntleted fists held torches that ignited with magical flames when anyone came near. In the center of each door was a silver and malachite shield-shape emblazoned with the Slytherin crest, and above each such crest was a plaque with a name upon it. Bulstrode, Flint, Stormdark, Zabini, others. One read Kirkallen, and Harry felt a not unpleasant tingle at the sight of it.

"You have individual rooms?" he asked.

"Don't you?" Blaise replied with a sly grin.

Malfoy stopped in front of a door with Goyle's name on it. Harry thought that it must be locked - if they needed separate rooms, they probably also locked them - but it opened readily enough. Malfoy went in. Blaise and Harry advanced to the threshold.

Goyle's room was a pigsty. Clothing everywhere, school books piled indifferently in a corner, half-eaten sandwiches on the shelf above the unmade bed, sweets wrappers all over the floor. A poster of a succubus hung on one wall and a veela-of-the-month calendar on another.

The desktop was almost bare. By the look, most everything that had been on it - empty butterbeer bottles, crumpled homework assignments, bent quills, ink pots, a copy of the Quidditch Illustrated swimsuit edition, a bag of toffees - had been shoved onto the floor.

Only four items remained. Malfoy stood looking down at them, fists curled at his sides. His back blocked the view of whatever was left on Goyle's desk.

"What is it?" Blaise asked, venturing in.

When Blaise reached Malfoy, Malfoy stepped aside and Harry could see the desk. Could see what was on the desk. A wrinkled bit of parchment - from the door, he recognized Goyle's large, clumsy printing but couldn't read the words - and a dark brown glass vial, uncorked and empty.

"No," Malfoy said. "No. I refuse to believe it. He wouldn't."

"Read what it says," Blaise said, picking up the paper.

"He wouldn't!" Malfoy's voice rose.

"It's a suicide note, Draco."

"It can't be."

Harry was jolted to the core. "A suicide note?"

Malfoy spun. "Get out of here, Potter! You're not supposed to be here!"

"He killed himself? He did ... he did that to himself?"

"I can't take it anymore," Blaise read. "Sorry. Tell my mum goodbye."

"He did not kill himself!" Malfoy yelled. "It's a mistake! A trick! A forgery!"

"You've seen his handwriting as much as I have," Blaise said, tipping the parchment toward Malfoy.

"I don't care! It's a lie!"

"You have to show that to Snape," Harry said.

"Don't you tell us what we do or don't have to do, Potter!"

"He's right, though -"

"Shut up, Blaise!" Malfoy breathed rapidly through his nose, his pale eyes bright, his normal pallor awash with emotion. "It wasn't suicide. It was murder!"

"Look at this bottle," Blaise said. "It's from Deadly Doses in Knockturn Alley; I'm familiar with the label. And, see? Liquipurging Elixir Capsules. They're coated, so they're slow-acting. He could have taken them this morning, and when the coating dissolved ..."

"I'm telling you, he didn't!" Malfoy looked ready to punch Blaise.

"Be reasonable, Draco."

"You be reasonable! Who'd kill themselves like that? It was a fucking horror show, Blaise!"

Harry blinked a little.

"Draco -" Blaise said.

"And you saw him," Malfoy ranted on. "You saw how shocked he was, how surprised! How much it hurt! He didn't do that to himself. No way in hell. No way in hell he did that to himself."

"So, what are you saying?" Blaise pointed at the parchment, then at the bottle. "Someone came into his room and forced him to write a suicide note, then gulp down a dozen Liquipurging capsules? How? The Imperius Curse?"

"It must have been," Malfoy said.

"And then what? Greg just walks out of here and doesn't tell anyone? Doesn't mention it?"

"Well ..."

"Imperius Curse and then a Memory Charm, you think?" Blaise pressed.

"Could have been!" But Malfoy's expression showed that even he thought that this was getting far-fetched.

"It would have had to've been one of us, too," Blaise said. "Seen as how it happened right here in our dormitory. Why would any of us want to kill Greg?"

"None of us would ..." Malfoy trailed off and turned to give Harry a long, cold, speculative look.

"You think I did it?" Harry returned the look.

"It's all a little too convenient, isn't it?" Malfoy purred, his earlier hysteria a thing of the past. "Three Slytherins, three sons of Death Eaters, three murders. And who's right on the scene every single time? None other than Harry Potter."

"Oh, now, hey," Blaise protested. "Are you saying they were all killed? Ted and Vince, too?"

"What do you say, Potter?"

"I say you're a nutter, Malfoy," Harry said. "I'm no murderer, and you know it."

"What I know is that you hate us," Malfoy said. "Sending our fathers to Azkaban wasn't good enough, was it? Especially not once they got out and took care of Sirius Black. You want revenge, but you can't get at them so you come after us. Vengeful and cowardly ... fine traits for a high-and-mighty Gryffindor!"

"I did almost end up in Slytherin with you," Harry said, anger displacing what sympathy he had been feeling for Malfoy. "But that's beside the point. I've never killed anyone. You're out of your mind if you believe that."

"It's easier to believe that than to believe all three of them committed suicide within a few weeks of each other," Malfoy said. "Two of them on the same damn day!"

"Actually, it isn't that unheard-of," Blaise said. "There's something called a suicide contagion. Usually applies to teenage girls, but -"

"Shut up, Blaise!"

Harry lowered his head for a moment and took a slow, deep breath. He looked back up at Malfoy. "Listen, I'm sorry about your friends. Sure, we've had a history, we don't have any reason to get along. But I wouldn't kill them, and I didn't kill them."

Malfoy scoffed. "You'd like me to think so, wouldn't you? But I know better than that, Potter. I know what's really going on here. You won't get away with it. Next time -"

"By that reasoning," Blaise cut in, "you'd be next, eh, Draco?"

"What?" choked Malfoy.

"If Potter is behind it. You're the only son of a Death Eater left here at Hogwarts. That puts you last on the list."

"It ... I ... no, that's not so."

"But it is," Blaise said. "Nigel's aunt was one, I think, and Devona's grandfather on her mom's side, and that first-year brat Edmund Hawke had a few in the family tree, but you're the only one who's got a close living-relation Death Eater."

"Are you trying to be funny, Zabini?"

"Just following your chain of logic."

"I'm not behind it," Harry said. "There's no 'it' to be behind. They killed themselves. You can look for guilt and conspiracies as much as you like, but I'm telling you, nobody pushed Nott out that window with a rope around his neck. Nobody slashed Crabbe's wrists and left him to simmer. Nobody forced those capsules down Goyle's throat. Nobody but themselves."

He knew, too, that he had to get out of here. Before long, more Slytherins would show up, having heard about what happened in the Potions classroom. Or Snape himself would put in an appearance, and coming face to face with Snape again was something Harry would just as soon avoid. Or Neville and Hannah would revive, and panic once they realized where they were.

"Potter couldn't have done it," Blaise said. "How could he get into our dormitory?"

"He's in here now."

"I let him in."

"Oh?" Malfoy inquired icily. "Do you make a habit of inviting Gryffindors into our private quarters?"

"Don't be an ass," Blaise said.

"I'm going," Harry said. "I'll take the others with me before they come around."

"This isn't over," Malfoy said. He looked around Goyle's room, and his chin began to quiver. He was on the verge of tears. Then, as if the very idea of displaying even a hint of that weakness was unbearable, he turned away from Harry. He brought the heels of his hands down hard on Goyle's desk, making the brown glass bottle jump. "Get out of here, Potter."

Harry retreated down the curving hall and emerged once more into the common room. Pansy Parkinson, who looked as unfortunately like a pug dog as ever, was still sprawled in the big chair. Neville was groaning like someone in the grips of a bad dream, and Hannah Abbott's big blue eyes fluttered open as Harry came in. Her blond brows drew together.

"Harry? What ... where ...?"

"Never mind," he said. "You'll be happier if you don't ask. Help me get Neville."

Always obliging, the Hufflepuff girl got up and slung one of Neville's arms around her shoulders. Harry took the other. Between them, they half carried and half dragged Neville out.

"Was that the Slytherin dorm?" Hannah asked in a small, timid voice, the voice of a cartoon mouse, once it was safely behind them.

"Yeah."

She shivered. "It was horrible. Like being in a nightmare. All those snakes!"

"Are you okay?"

"I think so. I ..." She faltered. "Oh, my God! Goyle! He ..."

Harry nodded.

"Is ... is he all right?"

"No. He's dead."

Neville thumped to the hall floor as Hannah fainted again. Harry stood there over the pair of them, rubbing his temples and grumbling in exasperation.

He was spared having to lug or levitate them again by the arrival of a whole crowd of people. Ernie Macmillan was leading the way, a trifle shamefaced at how he'd bolted from class. Millicent Bulstrode was among them, hulking like a troll in a wig.

As the group rounded a corner and saw Harry, standing there with Neville and Hannah at his feet, they came to an alarmed halt.

"They're only unconscious," Harry said.

Just then, Snape and Madame Pomfrey appeared around another corner, from the direction of the Potions classroom. Snape had a long dragonhide-wrapped bundle in his arms and looked supremely annoyed to find an entire throng in his path.

It all got quickly sorted out, with Ernie and a few other Hufflepuffs taking charge of Hannah and Ron elbowing his way through to help Harry with Neville. Everyone peppered Snape and Madame Pomfrey with questions, but when no clear answers were forthcoming, they started looking to Harry.

Snape gave him the evil eye. It was like Occlumency lessons all over again ... Harry could feel Snape's mind boring into his.

Not a word, Potter, not one word.

So he deflected the questions as best he could, and went upstairs. The entrance hall was full of students just finished with the morning's lessons, milling about talking or heading to their dormitories to drop off their books before lunch. Several other Gryffindors came running to Harry and Ron, exclaiming over Neville, wanting to know what had happened. So, too, did Cecily, the blonde-braided Ravenclaw seventh-year girl.

"Had an accident in Potions," Harry said, not wanting to tell her that Neville had fainted.

"Oh, poor Neville!" She leaned over him, brushed a lock of hair back from his brow, and kissed him on the cheek.

Ron looked flabbergasted. Neville, meanwhile, stirred and opened his eyes, as if Cecily's kiss had been the spell-breaking key to a fairy tale.

He stared at her, rather blank-eyed, for a few seconds. Then Neville grinned sheepishly. "Hi, Cecily."

"Are you hurt?" she asked, still smoothing his hair out of his face.

Over Neville's head, Ron mouthed his shock at Harry. Harry bit back a snicker.

"No," Neville said, pulling away from Harry and Ron to smooth his robes. "I'm fine, really."

"Thank goodness!"

"Cecily?"

"What, Neville?"

"Would you go to Hogsmeade with me next weekend?"

Harry wouldn't have thought it possible for Ron's jaw to drop any further, but it did. All around them was a wall of identical disbelieving expressions. Was this Neville Longbottom? Blundering, goofy Neville? Asking out a girl in front of an entire crowd of people? And not just any girl, but an older girl, blonde and pretty? Harry would have bet a bagful of Galleons that Neville wouldn't have had that kind of nerve, not in a million years ... but here he was, doing it.

"I'd love to," Cecily said. And, with a dimpled smile, she held hands with Neville as they walked together into the Great Hall for lunch.

**