Colin Creevey and the Search for a Hero: The Giant Serpent

CHAPTER FIFTEEN- A NIGHTTIME STROLL GONE AWRY

The lure of an extra Galleon had been too much for Colin to resist, so he spent most of the weekend and late into the evenings the next week trying to develop all Professor Lockhart's birthday party photos by Wednesday. The idea that his task would soon be over was such a relief that he couldn't wait to finish. And that was why he found himself, late one Tuesday night, deliberately staying in the photography dungeon until 2AM. After all, he'd already discovered that being out of bounds wasn't all that hard. As long as he was careful to check the corridors and hide at every noise he was confident that he wouldn't get caught.

Fortunately the pictures had all turned out well; Professor Lockhart's smile was dazzling in every photo, although many of his guests weren't quite as photogenic. Their photographic selves seemed somewhat less restrained than their true selves were at the banquet: the one he was looking at now of a tall witch with dark hair seemed to be trying to climb into his lap to hug or kiss Lockhart, while Lockhart's photographic self was trying to brush her off and smooth his hair for the camera.

"Yuck," said Colin aloud, wrinkling his nose at the photo.

When all the pictures had dried, Colin started gathering his things to leave the dungeons and was startled by how much heavier and bulkier the stacks of photos were compared with the rolls of film he'd started with. He couldn't risk carrying them all in his arms, what if he dropped the whole stack on a muddy patch in the entrance hall? He didn't want to go through developing all those again. So he decided there was no getting around it- he would have to retrieve his book bag from Gryffindor tower to carry the photos back up. He briefly considered just leaving the pictures down in the photography dungeon until tomorrow, but he didn't want anyone to find them- he could just imagine Snape's glee given the chance to throw them all away.

Colin didn't hear anyone but Peeves on his way back to Gryffindor tower, and Peeves was so busy cackling and throwing a pile of trashcans with their contents out the third story window, that he didn't even notice Colin hiding behind a nearby tapestry. Then he heard Filch's livid voice calling, "PEEVES! I'll have you this time!", followed by mad giggles from Peeves bouncing off the walls and away down the corridor. Colin waited for Filch to pass and then emerged from behind the tapestry and headed back up to Gryffindor tower. In his sleepy state it took him three tries to pronounce the password correctly- "Supercalafragalisticexpealidocious!". He grabbed his book bag and dashed back out the door and past the portrait of the fat lady in the pink dress that guarded Gryffindor tower's entrance.

"Shouldn't you be staying in bed?" she called out after him crossly, evidently put out at being awakened again.

Colin rushed down to the photo dungeon, carefully loaded his bag with the photos, and headed silently back up the stairs. He was on the second floor when he heard something and tried to dive into a nearby room. To his dismay, the door handle that he grabbed screamed loudly and then the doorknob and entire door disappeared- evidently it wasn't a door at all but just a solid wall pretending to look like a door, one of the many curious features of Hogwarts- and a very inconvenient time for Colin to discover it.

Colin started running; he'd only moved a few paces when Ginny came around the corner, apparently sleepwalking again. "Ginny! C'mon, we'd better run, I bet Filch'll come looking for that loud noise," he said breathlessly, grabbing her arm. But Ginny resisted his tugs. Then, with strength he would not have expected from her, she threw him down to the ground completely. Many of the photos flew out of the open end of the book bag as it slid across the floor with Colin.

"Hey!" he yelled angrily, scrambling back up onto his knees and trying to gather his pictures (which fortunately weren't harmed) as he watched Ginny march directly into a girls' toilet nearby. His right shoulder and knee were stinging, but not as much as his feelings. He had a right mind to tell Ginny off later- being sick is no excuse for being rude, after all, he was only trying to help her, and Filch was sure to look everywhere to find the source of the noise. And could she possibly have thrown him to the floor while sleepwalking? Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he focused on how to avoid Filch. Colin knew he couldn't very well follow Ginny into the girls' toilet to hide.

Colin had started running to the nearest intersecting corridor again when Mrs. Norris appeared directly in front of him and mewed at him, her scrawny frame seeming to block the entire corridor. Her lamplike eyes bulged in a disapproving sort of way, and Colin knew Filch would be following her call to the spot at any second. He seemed to have some mysterious connection with his cat, and Filch knew the secret passages through the school better than anyone but the Weasley twins.

"Er- nice kitty," Colin murmured, backing away, and then turning to run the other direction- but too late, Filch came wheezing into the other end of the corridor, and Colin was trapped.

"Well, look what we have here, a young student out of bed!" said Filch gleefully, smiling nastily to reveal several missing teeth. "You'll come with me, lad, you're in serious trouble now..."

He was led back to Professor McGonagall's office, and left alone in there for several agonizing minutes while he wondered what was going to happen to him, before Professor McGonagall appeared with her cloak thrown over a tartan nightgown. She seemed very angry.

"Mr. Creevey," she said, "No student is permitted to be out of their houses at night. Explain yourself."

Colin tried to think before he opened his mouth. He decided it was best to omit the part about having to go back for the bookbag, and especially to avoid any mention of Ginny. There was no point in getting anyone else in trouble too, after all.

Colin took a deep breath and began explaining. "I was working in the photo dungeons and I completely lost track of time. I'm sorry. I was developing these photos for Professor Lockhart- he said I could have an extra Galleon if they were done by Wednesday, and that's tomorrow-"

"Actually, Mr. Creevey, Wednesday would be today. It's two o'clock in the morning," McGonagall interrupted him, fuming. But after glancing at the bookbag stuffed full of photos, it was with a somewhat softer tone of voice that she instructed, "You may continue."

"-so I was just going back to my tower when Filch found me." Colin was feeling very small and hoping that was enough of an explanation.

Professor McGonagall shook her head, frowning. "I expected you would have more sense than this! If a Galleon is really worth that much to you, Mr. Creevey, then your priorities are misplaced! I made it very clear in our last meeting that your efforts to earn funding cannot conflict with your studies. How do you expect to pay any attention in the classes that you're trying so hard to afford, if you don't get enough sleep? How can Hogwarts ensure your safety if you are roaming the corridors in the middle of the night? Twenty points will be taken from Gryffindor for your misconduct, and you will serve a detention. Be grateful it isn't more. If your fundraising efforts run afoul of the rules again, the Hogwarts staff will not offer you such opportunities in the future. You have been warned. Now, you will return to your tower immediately."

Colin was very grateful- and rather surprised- to have only lost twenty points. Possibly Professor McGonagall took pity on him because she knew how desperate he was financially. But the threat of losing any opportunity to earn money in the future was enough of a deterrent to convince him not to take the rules so lightly again.

Professor Lockhart seemed less than his usual delighted self when Colin gave him the finished pictures the next day- he muttered something about extra galleons not being an incentive to break rules, just reward for a job well done- and he gave Colin two extra galleons instead of one. Colin suspected that Professor McGonagall had given Lockhart a firm talking to as well. He was surprised at himself for laughing inwardly at the thought as he clutched his hard earned galleons tightly.

Professor McGonagall watched Colin with an exceptionally sharp eye that afternoon in Transfiguration. It took all his effort to keep his head from nodding down on the desk as they had in Defense Against the Dark Arts that morning.

In the week before Colin was asked to serve his detention, he became even more convinced that he deserved the punishment he'd gotten, but far more nervous about what the detention would be like. Ginny had been looking so pale and weak that Colin hadn't mustered the nerve to confront her about her part in getting him caught- nor had he found an opportunity to talk to her alone- and he somehow suspected she wouldn't admit to being out of bounds again anyway. Maybe she doesn't even remember it, maybe she really was sleepwalking or enchanted or something, he thought. But he also didn't tell anyone else that she'd been out of bounds, because if word got around, he thought a detention might be enough of a strain to send Ginny to the hospital wing for a month or so.

From what Ginny had told him back on the Hogwarts Express, Harry had almost been killed serving detention with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest last year. Since everyone knew the forest had werewolves living in it, Colin had to wonder why they would assign any student a detention in there in the first place. It was almost as though they were trying to terrify the students into behaving better. Not that it was Hagrid's fault- he was nice enough from what Colin had heard, nothing like Snape - but Hagrid was twice as big as any normal man and nothing seemed to scare him. Hagrid just took Harry to do school work that had to be done during his detention last year- the most terrifying work possible. Colin shuddered and tried not to think about it again.

Professor McGonagall approached him at breakfast in the Great Hall the day before Halloween. "You will be serving your detention with Hagrid tonight. You will be in the entrance hall by seven-thirty." she said firmly.

"You got a detention, Colin? Was it Snape? What happened?" asked Chuck.

Colin had been relieved when his twenty points had gone relatively unnoticed. In fact, nobody ever found out he'd gotten in trouble at all. Evidently Snape had been in a particularly foul mood the day Colin had been caught and had taken loads of points from various Gryffindors, so the points Colin had lost didn't really stand out.

Colin spread marmalade on his toast and resigned himself to explaining. "You remember Lockhart's birthday party? All those pictures I took? He offered me an extra Galleon if I developed the photos by last Wednesday. So I stayed up late last Tuesday to finish, and got caught out of bounds coming back from the photography dungeon."

"All for Lockhart? You're nutters! That guy's head is so swollen, he's forgotten that the world doesn't revolve around him!" said Winston, overhearing Colin. Winston and Phil had never warmed to Colin, and while he didn't think they hated him the way Malfoy did, they seemed never to pass on the opportunity to point out Colin's failings.

"He is not!" Felicity interrupted hotly, leaning over to look at Winston and tangling her blonde ringlets in her scrambled eggs. "Lockhart is brilliant-"

"Winston, you're just-" began Rich, leaping to Colin's defense.

"You know, I reckon you're right, Winston," interrupted Colin, wincing. Colin thought it was best to keep the peace, because the thought of rising to Lockhart's defense made his stomach sick. He'd never quite recovered his respect for Professor Lockhart after the end of the birthday party. Much as he hated to admit it to himself, Lockhart just didn't seem capable of doing any of the heroics described in his books. And even if he had, reading all about Lockhart's adventures in Defense Against the Dark Arts classes seemed to teach them more about publicity outreach than it did how to fight wicked creatures.

Felicity was speechless in her horror at hearing nobody rise to Lockhart's defense, but Rich looked almost relieved and very curious.

Colin continued, "I didn't do it for Lockhart. He was paying me to be his photographer. I did it because I need every Galleon I can get if I want to stay here at Hogwarts."

"If you want to stay here? What, are you going somewhere, Colin?" asked Chuck, confused.

"No, I lost my scholarship. The Malfoy family took money away from all students who aren't Slytherin. Draco Malfoy says he did it because I'm a mudblood, whatever that means."

Several people at the table gasped at this; it seemed to cause even more outrage than the comments about Lockhart. "He didn't really say that, did he?" asked Phil, open-mouthed.

"Why? What does it mean?" asked Colin, bewildered at the table's unanimous horrified response. "He's called me that since the day he first saw me, on Hogwarts Express."

"Oh, he's just horrible! I hope Harry grinds his face in the dust in that Quidditch match! That's an awful thing to say, it means that he thinks anyone from a muggle family has dirty or tainted blood." said Felicity, frowning.

"Why would my blood be different from anyone else's?" asked Rich indignantly.

"It's not!" answered Phil. "But they talk about having magic in your blood, and wizarding pride, and all these silly things and they think muggles are inferior, somehow, and that anyone muggle-born must be not as good as a witch or wizard with magical parents. It's just stupid prejudice," said Phil, shaking his head. "And I hope you didn't pay him any attention, Colin, Malfoy's a brainless git parroting whatever his father says. They say Malfoy's father was right in there with You-Know-Who; I hear the whole family is a load of dark wizards."

It was the first time Colin could remember hearing something nice from Phil. "Thanks," he said, smiling gratefully. He wasn't sure how he felt about learning the meaning of Malfoy's favorite insult. It seemed so ridiculous a prejudice; he'd known Malfoy was hostile from the beginning, and based on what Mhairi had told him about Slytherin it all fit together. Colin felt that he could have guessed what "mudblood" meant, and it wasn't any big surprise. On the other hand, seeing everyone's reaction at the table convinced Colin that he should be far more offended next time Malfoy said that. He wondered if Slytherin House had any muggle-born students in it at all.

In the outrage over Malfoy's comments about muggle-borns, Colin's detention was forgotten by everyone but him. Hearing that he was serving his detention with Hagrid convinced him that he was headed into the Forbidden Forest for sure, and possibly to his doom. He spent the day not concentrating in his classes at all, but battling ever-increasing bouts of terror, and trying to steel his nerves and remind himself that he was chosen for Gryffindor because he was courageous. Still, it took a great deal of determination not to run and hide after dinner but to walk into the entrance hall and face whatever awful terror awaited him.

"All right there, Mr. Creevey?" said Hagrid, peering down at Colin with concern.

"Yes, sir," said Colin politely, feeling his mouth go dry.

"Yeh look scared outta yer wits! There's no reason ter be afraid of a bit o' hard work, eh?"

Colin remained silent. He didn't dare ask what his punishment would be, but his feelings of dread only increased as Hagrid led him out the doors of the castle, and across the lawn toward the edge of the forest. Colin barely heard Hagrid's words as they walked.

"Dunno how long this'll take us, but I need some help ter have everythin' ready by tomorrow. Would o' offered yeh this fer some gold, with Professor McGonagall sayin' you needed a bit o' help wit' paying fer tuition- I had the same problem meself, after me dad died while I was in me secon' year here at Hogwarts, I remember what tha' was like. But yeh went an' got a detention, so now yeh'll have ter to it fer free. Might be fun, tho'..." said Hagrid cheerfully.

When they reached Hagrid's hut Colin was just trying to suppress the somersaults that his innards seemed to be doing when they turned a corner, away from the edge of the forest, and walked into a garden just behind the hut, which was full of enormous pumpkins, taller than Colin and five times as wide.

"We'll be carvin' 'em into lanterns for the feast tomorrow, a decoration fer the Great Hall, like." Hagrid explained.

Colin felt a rush of relief followed by excitement as he walked around the pumpkins and looked at them all. He'd heard from Ginny that Hagrid was growing enormous pumpkins, but he never imagined anything like this. "Wow," he said breathlessly. "Are they magic pumpkins? How did you get them so big?"

"Er- I just grew 'em carefully. Lots o' water," said Hagrid, glancing furtively toward the edge of the garden where a pink umbrella was propped against the wall, "but they're just regular pumpkins." Hagrid looked proudly around. "Never got 'em this big before! I think the flesh-eatin' slug repellent did the trick, ter tell yeh the truth."

Soon Colin was carving great doorways in the sides and scooping out mounds of seeds, and he started talking with Hagrid in the moonlight as they worked.

"My brother Dennis would love to see these. He's two years younger, I'm hoping he gets into Hogwarts too- I think he will, though. We're muggle-borns."

"Yeh miss yer brother, do yeh? Wish I'd had a brother, but it was just dad an' me when I was growin' up. Mum left-"

"Yeah, me too," said Colin. "Dad's a milkman. He's a bit too busy to spend time with us, though. But we do all right on our own."

"S'that why yeh need some money? Yer mum gone?"

Colin shrugged. "We never had much in the first place. Dad was pleased when I won a scholarship, but then the Malfoy trust took it away again, just because I'm not in Slytherin. I hate Slytherin!" he added, kicking a pumpkin and hopping around nursing his toe for a few minutes.

"S'all right, Colin. Not all Slytherins are bad, yeh know, but there isn't a witch or wizard that went bad who didn' come from that house. Gryffindor's abou' the best place yeh could end up, really, an' yer better off without Malfoy's money. I'm sure yeh'll find a way ter afford things."

"When I found out I was a wizard," Colin said in a bitter, quiet voice, "I thought I could just magic together all the money I needed, magic mum back home..." his voice trailed off as he fought back his tears.

Fortunately, Hagrid seemed to be pretending not to look as he carved a cat-shaped window into one of the pumpkins. "Yeah, that's why we keep ourselves secret from the muggles an' all, don' wan' people everywhere to think we can just make every problem go away with magic. It just doesn' work that way. But, there's a lot more good in life than bad, an' yeh just have to take it all together as it comes."

Colin nodded and let this advice sink in for a while as he worked.

"What d'yeh think? Does this window look like a bat?" Hagrid asked, his wild whiskers peering out of a new window he'd carved.

"Erm- well, it looks more like a spaceship to me," said Colin shyly.

Hagrid laughed. "Well, Colin, if yer any better at drawin' pictures than I am, I'll get yeh a stepstool an' a quill an' yeh can draw the pictures for me ter cut out."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN- HALLOWEEN

Colin was bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm about the feast the next day. The hallways were filled with the smells of pumpkin and cinnamon spices, and everyone who heard Colin's description of the pumpkins big enough for three men to sit in was about as excited about it as Colin was.

"Last time I had detention I had to spread dragon dung over the cabbages. It took me three days to get it out from under my fingernails. Boy did you get lucky," said an older girl enviously.

At breakfast, Colin heard that there would be live bats as decorations and there was even rumor that Dumbledore had booked a troupe of dancing skeletons. It sounded even more spectacular than the welcoming feast at the start of the year.

Colin didn't forget to ask Chuck to take his photo before the feast so he could send it to mum, once he had his robes and hat on. He loaded a very small roll of film in the camera just for the occasion, since he wanted this to be a muggle photo. He brandished his wand over his cauldron (hiding the side with his name on it) for a couple of pictures, and then he and Rich and Chuck took pictures of each other and tried holding the camera out in front of them to get them all in the same picture together. Then he mailed the roll off to Dennis to get developed, hoping Dennis or dad had money to pay for it.

"Send me a copy of the photo, Colin, I want to see this- pictures that don't move!" marveled Chuck.

The Halloween feast was better than Colin could have imagined. There were platters of chicken legs, mounds of Yorkshire pudding, and heaps of baked spuds. The entertainment was great- Colin was particularly delighted with one of the dancing skeletons that kept losing its left arm every time it moved funny, and he took loads of pictures. His housemates were delighted with the pumpkins. The Weasley twins tried to find out how many people one pumpkin could hold, and they had six students inside (two of them hanging out the windows) before Professor McGonagall put a stop to things. It was just as well that that game ended when it did anyway, because the pumpkin was starting to buckle under one of the windows.

There was only one thing missing that would have made the feast complete- Harry. This was the second big feast Harry had missed, and while Harry had been in trouble during the Welcoming Feast, Colin wondered whether there was more to it than that this time. He half expected another grand entrance- Ron and Hermione were missing too, and Colin had no doubt they were up to something interesting. So when the desserts appeared in front of him, he grabbed a few butter cookies and excused himself, running to the entrance hall and whispering "Polo!" to his wand. It pointed down, toward the dungeons. He was just about to head that way when he saw Ginny wandering up the stairs toward the second floor, in that same dazed state again.

Colin paused, weighing the chance to talk to Ginny alone with his desire to find Harry. But thinking of his scraped shoulder and Ginny's increasingly pale face helped him to make up his mind. He decided this was the right time to confront Ginny about the last time she'd been in this state- now, before she got herself in serious trouble. Then he could find Harry afterwards.

He sprinted up the stairs after Ginny, but could see no sign of her when he reached the landing. "Ginny!" he called out. "Wait up!" He chose a hallway and wandered most of the way down it before deciding she must have gone the other direction. Halfway down the other corridor he slowed down as he saw Ginny floating high in the air, painting on the wall with her wand, in huge letters, with spatters of bright paint all down the front of her robes.

"Ginny! What are you doing?" he half shouted as he walked toward her in horror. Ginny finished writing and came back to the ground, and without even looking up she marched back into a girls' toilet without replying- the same girls' toilet as last time, Colin noticed suddenly. And wasn't it near this same spot that he'd seen her walking the first time she'd been out after hours? He walked closer to the toilet and stepped in an enormous puddle flooding out from under the restroom door.

"Ginny, are you all right? Ginny!" he yelled through the door. He listened for an answer and heard anguished, echoing sobs from inside the bathroom.

He pounded on the door a few more times, calling out, "Ginny, are you OK?" and hoping for a reply; but the sobs went on unchanged. He glanced over at the wall and puzzled over the graffiti Ginny had left:

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED.

ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

This made no sense to Colin at all. When did Ginny learn to float like that? They'd only just learned how to make objects fly today in lessons, and only Mhairi had managed to float her feather above the desk. And if Ginny was sobbing and painting, she surely wasn't sleepwalking. But what on earth was wrong? Why was she crying? What did those words mean?

Colin decided to say what he had to say then and there, calling through the door, in case he didn't have another chance. "Look Ginny, it's me, Colin. I don't know what's bothering you, but I don't think hiding in there is going to help. I know you can hear me! What are you doing? Last time you did this, you scraped up my knee pretty badly when you pushed me, and I got a detention- and I think Filch will definitely be mad enough about that paint on the wall to give someone a detention again- and I'm not going to cover for you, you hear me?" He listened for an answer, growing increasingly irritated.

Through the sobs he did finally hear something- but it didn't sound like Ginny. It was a spitting, hissing noise that made his hair stand on end. He took a frightened step back from the door and noticed a chain of spiders running along the wall out of the bathroom suddenly, as if they were fleeing from the hissing noises inside. Chills ran down his spine as he surveyed the spooky situation and listened to the hisses and bumps from inside the bathroom. Colin was just beginning to wonder how much longer he should leave when he saw Mrs. Norris appear, jumping up on a torch bracket and looking from the writing on the wall above her to Colin with an accusing mew.

Colin wasn't about to take the blame for this, not after what Professor McGonagall said the first time he'd gotten in trouble. He decided to run and hide in the first room he could see, half ashamed at running away from trouble and half angry at himself for bothering to follow Ginny in the first place. He passed the fake doorknob this time and blindly reached for another door, yanking it open and slamming it shut behind him. He waited, panting, in the corner under a desk, expecting to hear Filch's screech in the hallway outside at any moment.

The first thing he heard was a girl's voice, shouting "Look!", followed by a few low words he couldn't catch, but it didn't seem to be Filch's voice. He kept waiting. Then he heard a rumble, like distant thunder, of many feet- the feast must have ended, and everyone was coming upstairs. That means Filch would never know who did it, Colin thought happily. He sighed in relief- he was off the hook.

As the crowd passed the room he was in he slipped out the door unnoticed and joined in the throng which had gone suddenly silent and stopped moving when they reached Ginny's bathroom. To his surprise, Colin saw that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were trapped right beneath the writing on the wall by the students who came down the corridor from both ends. For a moment, nobody said anything. Then someone called out through the crowd.

"Enemies of the heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"

It was Draco Malfoy. Colin felt a twinge of anger and he watched Malfoy push himself to the front of the crowd, his cold eyes alive, his usually bloodless face flushed. But Malfoy wasn't looking at the letters on the wall; he was looking at something dark hanging from one of the nearby torch brackets. Colin was on tiptoe still trying to make out what it was when Filch appeared.

"What's going on here? What's going on?" Then Filch looked over at the dark object and fell back, clutching his face in horror.

"My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris?" he shrieked. Colin realized with terror that the dark thing everyone was looking at was Mrs. Norris. The cat's tail was stiffly hanging around the torch bracket that Colin had seen her leap up to only minutes earlier- only she wasn't moving at all now. She seemed frozen, as motionless as a muggle plastic Halloween decoration.

Filch's eyes turned to Harry.

"You!" he screeched. "You! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll-"

"Argus!"

Dumbledore had arrived on the scene, followed by a number of other teachers. In seconds, he had swept past Harry, Ron, and Hermione and detached Mrs. Norris from the torch bracket.

"Come with me, Argus," he said to Filch. "You, too, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger."

Colin thought about coming forward to volunteer what he'd seen, but he realized that getting himself or Ginny in trouble wasn't going to get Harry out of trouble, and he didn't really want to tell on Ginny. After all, Colin didn't see who killed Mrs. Norris, and he knew that it probably wasn't Ginny! And why would a dead cat be stiff like that right away? And what did that writing mean, and how did Malfoy seem to know what it meant? Colin was still trying to decide what was going on and to do when Lockhart stepped forward eagerly.

"My office is nearest, Headmaster- just upstairs- please feel free-"

"Thank you, Gilderoy," said Dumbledore.

The silent crowd parted to let them pass. Lockhart, looking excited and important, hurried after Dumbledore; so did Professors McGonagall and Snape.

Colin was so horrified that he forgot all about the camera dangling around his neck, and he regretted that he hadn't take any photos of Mrs. Norris before she was taken away. As Colin passed the bathroom he paused and heard the low sobs that told him Ginny was still in there. He decided to wait in the common room for her to return- and then he could try to convince her to go forward and at least take the blame for the writing on the wall. She wouldn't be able to hide the paint all over her robes, after all, so she couldn't very well deny everything.

The common room buzzed with horrified whispers, but cleared out early as the very full students headed off to bed. But Colin didn't see Ginny come back in, though he stayed up late alone in the common room, waiting. He saw Harry, Ron, and Hermione come back in just after midnight, looking serious, but Colin fell asleep in a squashy chair in front of the fire before he knew it.