Another City, Not My Own

"ANOTHER CITY, NOT MY OWN"
Chapter Two
"The Rogue Owl"

Harry waited outside the entrance to the hospital wing. He could hear Madam Pomfrey and Professor Snape inside, shouting hurried orders to their assistants. After ten minutes, the hospital door opened and Professor Snape stalked out, looking furious. He walked past Harry without looking at him and headed for the hospital wing stairwell.

"Professor," Harry called after him. "What's happening?"

"I don't have time, Potter!" Snape snarled.

But Harry ran around him and positioned himself in the doorway leading to the stairs, blocking Snape's path. "Tell me what's happened!"

Snape glared at him for a moment. "She's been poisoned."

Harry felt his stomach drop. "By Lucius Malfoy?" Snape looked at him, sharply. "I saw the note on the table. Why would Malfoy want to poison Professor McGonagall?"

"He didn't," said Snape. "Apparently, his target was Professor Dumbledore. McGonagall went up to the headmaster's office this morning to drop off the Transfiguration curriculum for next term. While she was there, she noticed an owl sitting in the window with a message tied to its leg. The message looked important--Malfoy apparently affixed a Ministry of Magic seal to the letter. So Professor McGonagall took the message off the owl's leg and brought it down to Dumbledore. Halfway to the Great Hall, she suddenly started to feel dizzy."

"Can you save her?" Harry asked.

"I don't know. She's convulsing violently. She's having trouble breathing and her heart rate and blood pressure are both off the scale. We don't even know what we're dealing with here. We're having trouble identifying the poison that Malfoy used."

"But if the poison was on the letter--?" Harry started.

"The poison was not on the letter!" Snape snapped at him. "It was on the owl. The bloody thing scratched Professor McGonagall as she was taking the note off its leg. Apparently, the poison was on its talons."

"What happened to the owl after it scratched her?"

"How should I know? It flew off out the window of Dumbledore's office. It's probably miles away from here by now. Now, get out of my way, Potter! I've got work to do!" Snape shoved past Harry and stomped off down the stairs.

Left alone, Harry paced the corridor outside the hospital wing, rubbing the back of his neck. Should've seen this coming, he thought. The Malfoys live for revenge. Should've known that Lucius would try to get back at Dumbledore for expelling his son from Hogwarts.

Why did innocent people always seem to get caught in the crossfire like this? Two years ago, Cedric Diggory had been killed in the graveyard at Little Hangleton, caught in a trap meant for Harry. Last year, Colin Creevey had died, along with three other wizards, when he'd been caught in the attack on the Hogs Head Pub for which Harry had later been framed. And now Professor McGonagall was going to pay the price for Draco Malfoy's expulsion, scratched by an owl meant for Dumbledore that--

"Wait a minute!" Harry said aloud, stopping in the middle of the corridor. He suddenly remembered his breakfast conversation with Jeremy Wight. Jeremy had mentioned seeing a strange owl in the Owlery, fighting with the other owls.

Harry turned and went through the entrance into the hospital wing. At the far end of the ward, a white screen had been put up around Professor McGonagall's bed. Harry could hear McGonagall groaning in pain from behind the screen.

"Please!" Madam Pomfrey was saying. "Try to hold her steady. I must get this needle in to draw a blood sample!"

Harry could make out the massive shadow of Hagrid behind the screen, next to the small, frail, pointed-hat shadow of Dumbledore.

"Hagrid!" Harry called. "I need to see you a minute."

"Not now, Harry!" Hagrid yelled from behind the screen.

"Yes, Hagrid. Right now! It's very important. Professor McGonagall's life may depend on it!"

* * *

Harry sent Hagrid down to his hut, asking him to retrieve a pair of leather gloves and any nets he had that could be used to catch an owl. Meanwhile, Harry ran down to Gryffindor tower. He found the common room jammed with students--all classes had been suspended and the students returned to their respective houses while the professors tried to determine what was wrong with McGonagall. As soon as he walked into the Gryffindor common room, Harry was bombarded with questions.

"Is McGonagall all right?" "Is she sick?" "What happened to her? "Someone said she had died?" "Do you know what's going on, Harry?"

"Everyone, shut up a minute!" Harry shouted. "I literally do not have time to talk right now! Where's Jeremy Wight?"

Jeremy stepped forward. Harry pulled him through the crowd and up the dormitory stairs, whispering to Ginny and Hermione, "Do me a favor. Keep everyone off my back for a while. I'll explain later."

Jeremy followed Harry up the stairs to Harry's dormitory room. Harry shut the door and quickly explained what had happened to McGonagall. "That owl you saw up in the Owlery that was fighting with the others? Any chance it could still be up there?"

Jeremy thought for a moment. "Yes! It could be!"

"Would you know it if you saw it again?"

"Yes, I would," Jeremy said confidently. "You think it could be the same one that scratched Professor McGonagall?"

"Let's hope so," Harry said. "If we can catch it, maybe we can get some of the poison off its talons and figure out what's making McGonagall sick."

"I've got something in my room that could help us to catch it."

Harry was thinking fast. "Okay. Run down to your room and change into something that you can move around in, a long-sleeve sweater, something that'll cover your arms. Then I want you to run down to Ravenclaw Tower and get Cho Chang. Tell her to bring along her Firebolt and her Quidditch gloves. Then bring her up to the Owlery. I'll meet you up there."

When Jeremy was gone, Harry quickly changed out of his school uniform and into a dark gray sweater. He grabbed his Firebolt and Quidditch gloves and made his way back out through the common room, heading for the Owlery.

He found Hagrid waiting for him at the bottom of the Owlery staircase. Hagrid was holding a burlap sack with a drawstring and three large nets on poles, like butterfly nets, that he used to handle small animals for his Care of Magical Creatures class. Harry couldn't recall the last time he'd seen Hagrid looking so angry. His beetle eyes were burning and his face was plum-colored.

"Yeh ready? Okay, let's go!" Without waiting for Harry to say anything, Hagrid turned and stomped up the stairs, his huge feet pounding the wooden steps so hard that dust fell from the staircase.

"Hagrid, wait! Wait!" Harry shouted.

Hagrid stopped on the first landing and glared down at Harry. Harry thought that if Lucius Malfoy had seen the look on Hagrid's face, he would have instantly fallen on his knees and begged for mercy.

"Look, just calm down a minute," Harry whispered. He walked up the steps to the first landing and stood in front of the giant. "Now, I know you're mad--so am I. But we can't go charging up there, making a lot of noise. If the owl that scratched McGonagall is still up there, it'll hear us coming, and it'll fly out the window, and we'll never see it again. And if that happens, we may never know what the poison is."

Hagrid trembled with rage, his fists clenched. His beetle eyes moved left and right as if he were searching out something to hit.

"Look at me

," Harry hissed. Hagrid's eyes snapped to him. "We've got to do this quietly! I've got a plan--but you have to trust me. Just--let me handle this, all right?"

Hagrid continued to glare at him for a long moment. Finally, the big man let out a long, low growl that chilled Harry's blood. It sounded like a bear ripping some poor small animal to pieces in the woods.

"I swear, Harry," Hagrid whispered, "I will make Malfoy pay for this. I will make him wish he was never born, if I have to spend the rest of my life in Azkaban for it!"

Harry nodded. He looked up towards the top of the stairs. Please let it still be up there, he thought.

At that moment, to Harry's relief, Cho Chang arrived with Jeremy. Cho had on her leather seeker's gloves and the Ravenclaw jersey that she normally wore for Quidditch practice. She carried her Firebolt--a gift from her parents when they'd heard that she would be playing against Harry Potter in the Quidditch Cup final. She had been riding this same broom when she'd beaten Harry to the Golden Snitch to win the game.

"Oh, good! You're here," Harry said. As he came down the steps, Cho held out her hand with her arm bent at the elbow. Harry grasped her hand in a firm grip and they both turned their wrists inward, like arm wrestlers 'locking up.' It was Cho's own special greeting, but not one that she gave to everybody. It was something she reserved for a chosen few who had earned her respect. Harry Potter was one.

"Jeremy told me what happened to McGonagall," said Cho. "Is the owl still up there? Have you seen it?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "We're just about to go up and look."

He looked at Jeremy. The boy now wore a black sweater and a pair of leather gloves with long cuffs around the wrists--owl-handling gloves, Harry guessed. In one hand, he held an object that dangled on leather straps.

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"This is what I was telling you about," Jeremy said. He handed the object to Harry. It was made of five thin leather straps, each about twelve inches long, tied in a knot at the top. From the end of each strap hung a small leather pouch. Inside each pouch was a heavy gray ball about the size of a tennis ball. When Harry squeezed one of the pouches, it felt as if the leather balls inside were tightly packed with sand.

"I brought it from home," said Jeremy. "It's called a McGuffin. Owl trappers use it to catch owls in the Scottish highlands. It's sort of like a bola for birds of prey."

"You can catch an owl with this?" Harry asked.

Jeremy nodded. "See, back on the farm, every once in a while we get what we call a 'rogue' in the owl barn. Usually, it's a male owl from another wizard farm that gets in there and won't leave the females alone. Sometimes it's a non-magic owl that gets into the barn and won't leave. But when we get a rogue, this is what we use to catch it. It doesn't hurt the owl, but it can bring it down really fast."

Harry let the McGuffin dangle from his hand. With the leather pouches hanging down off the ends of the straps, it felt surprisingly weighty. "You think you could bring down the owl up there with this thing?"

"Yeah, I've done it before," said Jeremy. "If you two can flush the rogue out into the open, so I can get a clean shot, I can probably snag it with the McGuffin."

"Er, I don't want to sound pessimistic," said Cho, "but are we even sure that the owl that Jeremy saw up there is the one we're looking for? I mean, the owl that scratched McGonagall wouldn't want to hang around, would it? It'd want to get as far away from Hogwarts as it could--wouldn't it?"

Harry looked at Jeremy, who glanced up towards the Owlery and shook his head. "I'm betting that the owl I saw is the one we want. And I'm betting that it's still up there."

"Why is that?" Harry asked.

"Well, see--owls are not like machines. They can't keep flying forever. This owl, wherever Lucius Malfoy sent it from, it had to fly a long way to get to Hogwarts. Once it got here and delivered the message--and scratched Professor McGonagall--it couldn't just turn right around and head back. It'd have to rest first, and get something to eat after such a long trip. Owls need food after a long flight; their bodies burn up a lot of calories when they fly a long way. And they also need water after they've been flying or they get dehydrated. It's daylight right now and owls usually sleep during the daytime. Not only that, it's raining outside and owls don't like to fly in the rain."

"You don't think this owl that scratched McGonagall could have found a hollow tree somewhere where it could sleep?" Harry asked. "Maybe in the Forbidden Forest?"

Again, Jeremy shook his head. "This is a wizard owl that we're talking about. A wizard owl knows that in every wizard house, there's a place where you can get food and water and rest up before you head back. I'm betting that this owl's been here before--you know, maybe it delivered a package to Draco Malfoy while he was here. So it knows about the Owlery. After it scratched McGonagall, it came up here to find a dry place where it could get some sleep and wait for the sun to go down before it starts back again. If we're lucky, it's still up there right now."

"Well, then let's get up there and find the bloody thing," Hagrid growled impatiently, from the first landing, "before it decides to fly off again!"

Harry sighed. "Come on. Let's go up quietly. Hagrid, you'd better let us go up ahead of you. And remember, let's be careful. If this owl is still up there, it probably still has some kind of deadly poison on its talons."

They started up the stairs. Hagrid waited as they edged around him on the first landing, and followed them up.

"What do we do if it's not up there?" Cho whispered as they climbed the stairs.

"Search the Forbidden Forest, I guess," Harry said. He really hoped they didn't have to do that. The last time he'd gone into the Forbidden Forest, several months before, a Muggle hunter--an old retired army captain who had been out hunting and lost his way--had mistaken him for a rabbit and taken a shot at him.

"You're sure, when we get up there," Harry asked Jeremy, "that you can find the owl that you saw earlier? I mean, there's got to be, what, a hundred owls up there?"

"I can find it," Jeremy said. "Trust me. I know how to spot an owl."

"So what do we do if the owl is up there?" Cho asked. "Do we have a plan?"

"We try to corner it," Harry said. "If it flies, we use the brooms to go after it. If we can, we get it out in the open so Jeremy can use his McGuffin to bring it down. If not, we chase after it with Hagrid's nets until we catch it."

"You're making this up as you go, aren't you?" Cho said, with a smile.

"Pretty much, yeah," Harry admitted.

"I should tell you, Harry," Jeremy said, "an owl's not the easiest thing to catch on a flying broomstick."

"Well, I've caught other things on a broom," Harry said. "Golden Snitches. Dragon's eggs. Flying keys."

"Flying keys?"

"Long story. I'll tell you some other time."

"Aye, well," Jeremy said, as they reached the top landing, "the thing is, Harry--a Golden Snitch doesn't usually try to rip your face off your skull if you trap it in a corner. Owls have a tendency to do that. If you corner an owl, it will fight! And owls are dangerous fighters, even when they don't have poison on their talons."

"Right," Harry said grimly. He looked apprehensively at the Owlery door, then at Jeremy. "Maybe you'd better stay out here."

"What? No, I didn't mean--"

"Look, if you're right, then maybe Cho and Hagrid and I should handle this. Maybe we can catch it ourselves. I don't want you getting hurt, Jeremy."

"No, you need me in there!" Jeremy said. "Listen, maybe there's a way we can sneak up on the rogue, catch it by surprise so it doesn't have a chance to fight. I can talk with the other owls, maybe get them to help us. I've done this kind of thing before, Harry, I know how to do it!"

Harry took a deep breath. At the end of the previous year, after his return from Azkaban, he had brought his friends together in Dumbledore's office and made a pledge to them. "I promise you that I will defend Hogwarts from all those who would harm it. Whether it's Voldemort or anyone else, I pledge to you that I will defend this school, its students and its teachers, from anyone who would try to hurt them or us. I ask you all now to join me in this pledge."

Harry's friends had all taken the pledge--Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Cho, Neville Longbottom, Susan Bones, Dennis Creevey. At that time, Jeremy Wight had not yet come to Hogwarts. But Harry had a feeling that, if he were asked, the boy would take that same pledge without hesitation.

He stared at Jeremy. The last thing he wanted to do was put an eleven-year-old kid in any kind of danger, even if that kid knew his way around an Owlery. But, Harry reminded himself, he and his friends had faced even worse dangers than this during their first year at Hogwarts.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, giving Jeremy a piercing stare.

Jeremy nodded. "You need my help on this. Nobody knows the owls in here better than me. And I want to save Professor McGonagall too."

"All right," Harry said. "But you stay next to Hagrid. You don't move or do anything unless I tell you to. Understand?" He looked at Cho. "Are you sure about this?"

"She's my teacher too, Harry," said Cho. She reached out and squeezed his arm firmly. "Besides, you know my pledge. I will defend Hogwarts from all those who would harm it."

Harry put his hand over hers and gripped it for a moment. Their brief relationship off the Quidditch field during the previous year had not lasted. After a month of very casual dating, Cho had "let him go," as she put it, and asked him to do the same for her. It wasn't fair, she said, for them to keep going on like this when in her heart, she was still grieving for Cedric Diggory.

"You have to understand that Cedric was very special to me. If he had lived, I have no doubt that we would have spent the rest of our lives together--it was that kind of a feeling. It'll be a long time before I can feel that way about someone else. It will happen, I'm sure--I will love again, some day. But for now, I need time to let my heart heal. I can never pay you back for what you've done for me, Harry. You've helped me to see that I can heal, that I can go on. If I were looking for a boyfriend right now, you would definitely be at the top of my list. But it isn't fair to you for us to keep going on like this if I can't feel for you what I felt for Cedric. So I have to ask you to let me go. Let me go, so I can heal my heart."

"I could wait," Harry had offered. "I could give you as much time as you need. I could wait for you, until you're ready."

"You could," Cho had told him, with a smile. "But I don't think you should. Because if you wait around for me, you're going to miss your chance with Ginny Weasley. I know the two of you have become good friends over the past few months. Just keep being her friend, Harry. But try to be a little bit more. I think you'll find, very quickly, that she's just what you need."

Cho had been right, of course. Ginny Weasley had turned out to be exactly what Harry needed. And Cho had remained a very valuable ally and a good friend.

"All right, then," Harry said now. He put his hand on the Owlery doorknob. "Here goes."

"Uhh, just a suggestion," Jeremy said quickly. "When we get in here, better let me do the talking."

Harry looked at him. "The owls won't understand Cho and Hagrid and me?" he asked, puzzled. As far as he knew, Hedwig had always been able to understand his directions perfectly.

"Oh, they'll understand you," Jeremy said. "Owls are smart enough to understand just about anybody who talks to them. But what I mean is, they may trust me a bit more because I can understand them, I can speak their language."

"Jeremy, where did you learn how to talk to animals?" Cho asked.

"It's a gift," Jeremy said, with a shrug.

"A gift?"

"Yeah. My uncle Siegfried gave it to me for my eighth birthday."

He said this as if it were perfectly normal to give magical skills to someone as a birthday present. Harry and Cho shared a quizzical look. Then Harry said to Jeremy, "All right. You do the talking in here. Just make sure you choose your words carefully. And remember, stay close to Hagrid. Everyone ready?"

He turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door.

* * *

They entered the Hogwarts Owlery very slowly, Hagrid ducking low to squeeze in through the narrow doorway. The Owlery was a vast, cathedral-like room, over a hundred feet long. It was dimly lit even on sunny days. There were no candles or torches on the walls--the room was purposely kept dark for the sake of the owls, whose eyes were very sensitive to light. The only light came from the large open windows along both sides of the room, where the owls came in and went out, and from a small, glass-covered, octagonal window at the top of the wall at the far end of the room.

Harry and his friends could hear the rain splashing outside, drizzling softy against the Owlery roof thirty feet above their heads. Gray light filtered in through the open windows. It was very cold, and there was a musty, earthy flavor in the air.

They stared up through the intricate construction of rafters and cross-beams that lined the ceiling, spanning from one arched wall to the other at intervals of about twenty feet. Even in the shadows, it was easy to see that the rafters were crowded with owls. Harry could see their shapes and outlines moving together. He could hear their feathers rustling, and could hear them hooting softly. It sounded as if they were having a hushed council over some problem, and were keeping their owl voices very low.

"What's the matter with all the birds?" Cho whispered.

"She's right. Something's wrong," Jeremy said, beside Harry's elbow. "They should all be asleep right now. Something's got them stirred up."

Harry looked along the walls. Between the open windows, there were horizontal perch bars attached to the walls at different levels, like curtain rods. Some of these bars had nest boxes fitted onto them. Normally, the perch bars and nest boxes would be full of sleeping owls during the daytime. Now they were almost empty. A few straggling owls remained in the nest boxes, mostly mothers guarding their eggs or newborn owlchicks. These owls too were awake and alert, their eyes shining in the dim light. Harry noticed that they kept glancing nervously towards the back of the Owlery, then glancing up at the owls in the rafters above.

Harry felt his scalp prickle as he listened to the odd rustling of feathers up on the rafters. "Okay. How do we do this?" he whispered.

"Well, the first thing we want to do is make sure the rogue owl can't get out." Jeremy pointed along the walls. "So, as quietly as possible, we want to close all the window shutters and lock them."

"All right," said Harry. "Jeremy, you stay here with Hagrid. Cho, you take the windows on the left wall. I'll take the ones on the right."

"What about that one?" Cho asked, pointing to the octagonal window at the top of the far wall. "Do we need to close it?"

Jeremy shook his head. "It's a glass-pane window. You can't open it or close it. It just provides a bit of extra light to the Owlery. The owls can't get out through there."

Leaving their brooms with Hagrid, Harry and Cho separated and moved along the side walls of the Owlery. There were six open windows along each wall. As he came to each window, Harry reached out and quietly pulled the shutters closed, locking them with a small hook on each shutter. He heard Cho doing the same along the opposite wall.

Hedwig's nest box was on the wall between the third and fourth windows, resting on one of the perch bars at waist level. She was sitting in it guarding her eggs. Harry was slightly relieved to see that she was all right. She gave him a low, worried hoot. A few other mother owls were in the nest boxes surrounding hers. At the sight of a human boy, they began chirping and twittering. They were trying to tell him something.

Harry held up his hands. "Shhh! Quiet, everyone." He gently stroked Hedwig's crest feathers. "It's okay. I'm here. Tell your friends to keep quiet."

Hedwig hooted to the other owls, who stopped talking but still looked very nervous. Harry moved on to close the rest of the windows. As he closed the shutters on the fourth window, he heard a deep baritone hooting back at the Owlery door. He recognized it as the voice of Jeremy's owl, Hornsby. Then Harry heard a frantic, high-pitched twittering that he recognized as Pigwidgeon, Ron's owl. He heard Jeremy whisper, "Shut up, you bloody idiot!"

As he pulled the shutters closed on the fifth window, Harry heard Cho gasp in the shadows across the room.

"Cho?" he hissed.

"I'm all right," she whispered back.

Harry quickly closed the shutters on the last window on his side of the Owlery. Across the room, Cho did the same on her wall. The long room was now almost completely dark, except for a dusky shaft of light streaming down from the octagonal window at the top of the far wall. The rain spattered eerily on the roof overhead.

Harry quietly made his way back along the wall to the Owlery entrance. He heard the owls hooting and twittering above him, but could no longer see them in the darkness. It sounded as if Hornsby and Pigwidgeon were flying around up there, talking to the owls on the rafters. He could hear Hornsby's deep-throated hoot and Pigwidgeon's high-pitched trill, moving back and forth over his head.

He reached the Owlery door again. He could just barely make out Hagrid's massive shape standing in the shadows.

"Now what?" Hagrid growled.

"Let's wait here a second," whispered Jeremy. "I just sent Hornsby and Pigwidgeon up to talk to the owls on the cross-beams. Harry, the rogue owl is still here. Hornsby says it's been causing trouble all morning. That's why all the owls are up on the rafters. They were trying to decide how to get it out of here."

"Does Hornsby know where the other owl is now?" Harry asked.

"He says it's sleeping on a high cross-beam down at the other end of the room. It's all alone down there. It commandeered a place for itself and told the other owls to stay away."

"Harry," Cho whispered, joining them in the darkness. "Light your wand. I've got something you need to see."

"Wait, Harry," Jeremy said. "Keep the light low. We don't want to scare the rogue."

Harry pulled out his wand and whispered, "Lumos obscuro." A dim light, no brighter than the flame of a candle, issued from the tip of his wand. Cho was holding the body of a fat, gray owl that looked as if it had been flattened and torn to pieces. There were several large gashes on the body and the crumpled feathers were covered in blood.

"I found it on the floor, over by one of the windows," Cho whispered.

"It's Twinhofel," Jeremy breathed. "Padma and Pavarti Patil's owl."

"Bloody hell," Hagrid muttered, looking at the owl's body.

Harry and his friends looked at each other, a silent thought passing between them. The rogue owl would be very dangerous when they found it. They would have to be very careful going after it.

A massive swooshing and fluttering of wings made Harry turn. In the dim light of his wand, he saw, to his surprise, that all the owls that had been up on the rafters were now descending to the sides of the room. Harry looked at Jeremy as Hornsby swooped down and landed on his master's shoulder.

"I told Hornsby to tell all the owls up in the rafters to get down on the wall perches and stay there," Jeremy explained. "He's told them to keep quiet, and let us handle the rogue."

Harry looked up at the now-empty rafters, then down at the crowded perches and nest boxes along the walls. "How do we know the rogue's not going to try to hide among the other owls on the wall perches? We could be looking for a needle in a haystack."

"No," Jeremy said. "If it tries to land on the perches, the other owls'll chase it away. They want us to get the rogue out of here. They don't want it in here, Harry."

"All right," Harry said. "Let's go find it."

"Wait," said Jeremy. He put his hand over Harry's wand, blocking the dim light. "Put your wand out first."

"What?"

"It's better if we sneak up on it in the dark. If the rogue sees the light from your wand coming, it might panic and try to run."

"But we'll never be able to see it in the dark."

"We won't." Jeremy jerked his thumb at Hornsby, sitting on his shoulder. "But he will. He can see in the dark better than we can. He'll guide us to the rogue, and then we'll surprise it."

"No, Jeremy, you're staying right here. I don't want--"

"Harry, listen to me. You've got to trust me on this. There's a good chance that the rogue is still asleep on the rafter down there. If we sneak up on it in the dark, maybe we can catch it off guard. We let Hornsby guide us to it, and then you and Cho go up on your brooms and try to get on either side of it. You can surround it while it's sitting on the rafter. Then you light your wands and hit it with the nets. It'll be blinded by the light, so it won't know what hit it. We can catch it before it even knows what's happened."

Harry stared at him. "You're sure about this?" Jeremy nodded. Harry looked at Hagrid. "All right. You stay here, Hagrid. If the rogue comes down this way, you try to snag it with your net. Cho, you're with me. Jeremy, you keep hold of us and stay behind us as we go down there. If anything happens, you get out of the way and let Cho and me handle the rogue. Understand?"

Harry and Cho picked up their brooms and each took a pole net from Hagrid. Harry whispered, "Nox." The light from his wand went out. Standing behind them, Jeremy put one hand on Harry's arm, the other on Cho's.

"Ready?" Harry whispered. They started across the Owlery floor once more. "All right. Where's the rogue owl, Jeremy?"

Hornsby hooted softly in the dark. "He says it's still up on the beam at the far end. It hasn't moved."

As he and his friends crept across the floor, Harry could sense the movement of the owls on both sides of the Owlery. They were waiting tensely, shuffling a bit on the wall perches, but making very little noise. It was strange to hear them being so silent. Harry knew the owls were watching closely to see what would happen now. He could almost feel their unseen eyes piercing the darkness and focusing on him and his friends. It made him feel uneasy. Was the rogue owl watching them as well?

He watched the octagonal window at the top of the far wall get closer and closer as they approached it. When they were within ten feet of the wall, Jeremy whispered, "Okay, stop. We're right underneath the beam that its sitting on."

"Is it still up there?" Cho whispered.

"Hornsby says yes." Hornsby hadn't said anything for a few minutes. The owl must be squeezing Jeremy's shoulder with its talons to signal him, Harry decided.

He looked up at the rafters above them. He could barely make out the cross-beam just over his head. If he squinted, he could make out a large, dark silhouette sitting on the beam, just inside the angle of a diagonal supporting timber.

"Is it still asleep?" Harry hissed.

"I think so," Jeremy whispered.

"Okay. Cho, you take the left side of the cross-beam, I'll take the right. We flank it. When I light my wand, we try to hit it with the nets. I'll take the first stroke at it. You try to cut it off if it gets away from me. Ready?"

Harry and Cho mounted their brooms and kicked off, rising slowly through the darkness. About twenty feet up, they came alongside the cross-beam. Harry held his wand ready in one hand, the pole of the net in the other. Through the triangular spaces between the criss-cross timbers, he could just make out Cho hovering on her broom on the other side of the beam.

He stared hard at the cross-beam--and discovered that he could no longer see the shape of the owl! Was the rogue still there?

Suddenly, Hornsby hooted very loud below them. The next instant, Jeremy shouted, "Harry, it's off the beam! It knows we're here!"

"Lumos!" Harry shouted. As his wand blazed to light, he heard a horrible screech and an enormous black shape shot out of the darkness, straight at him. Harry ducked just in time as a flurry of white talons whirled past his eyes and a huge pair of black wings thrashed the air just over his head. The owl was so close that its tail feathers grazed Harry's scalp.

Harry spun around on his broom, looking for the owl. As Cho brought her wand to light on the other side of the beam, the owl attacked again. She screamed and cartwheeled in the air as it just missed her shoulder, slashing at her with its claws and disappearing into the gloom.

"Where'd it go?" Harry shouted, glancing around the shadows. "Where is it?"

"There!" Jeremy yelled, below them. He pointed down towards the Owlery door.

The owl had already flown back down the length of the room. At the Owlery entrance, Hagrid was swiping at it with his net as it circled over his head.

"I got it, Harry!" he shouted, as his stroke missed again. "I got it!"

Excited at seeing the rogue owl take flight, the other owls in the Owlery hooted and shrieked from their wall perches and nest boxes. Harry couldn't tell if they were cursing the rogue or cheering for Hagrid to catch him. It sounded like a riot at a football match. The noise in the room was deafening!

Harry stuck his lighted wand in his belt. He gripped his broom and headed toward the Owlery door to help Hagrid. Cho followed. But halfway there, they braked to a halt in the center of the room. The rogue owl had just flown back down the length of the room in the opposite direction, zigzagging through the triangular spaces between the rafters over their heads.

Harry looked back to see the rogue hit the octagonal window at the top of the back wall and bounce off. It looked as if the owl were trying to break through the window and escape. The owl scratched furiously at the glass pane with its talons, its huge black wings beating wildly against the window frame.

Harry and Cho sped back towards the octagonal window. Sensing their approach, the owl suddenly whirled and latched its talons onto the edge of the window sill. It screeched at them madly, its yellow eyes flaring in the light of Harry's wand.

Harry held up a hand. "Wait a second, Cho!" He and Cho came to a halt a few feet from the back wall, hovering in the air in front of the window. The owl continued to screech at them angrily. The other owls were making such a racket that Harry couldn't hear himself think.

"Tell them to shut up!" he called down to Jeremy.

"Quiet!" Jeremy shouted at the owls. His voice was barely audible. "Quiet, all of you!"

There was a sudden loud "BOOM!" from behind them. The walls of the Owlery shook and dust fell from the ceiling. Harry didn't have to look back to know that Hagrid had just smashed his giant foot down on the floor.

"SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!" the giant roared.

The owls instantly fell silent.

In the quiet that followed, Harry listened to the drumming of the rain on the roof. He looked at Cho, who raised her eyebrows, impressed.

The owl in the octagonal window, who had been momentarily startled by Hagrid's yell, started screeching angrily at them again. The light from Harry's and Cho's wands burned in its eyes like fire.

"He says if you come any closer, he'll kill you both!" Jeremy shouted up.

The owl looked like it could do it too, Harry thought. It was a huge black creature with pointed ears like devil's horns, a long sharp beak, and massive, razor-like talons. In the back of his mind, Harry thought that he had seen this owl somewhere before. Perhaps, as Jeremy had said, it had delivered a letter or package from Lucius Malfoy to his son at Hogwarts before Draco was expelled.

"Listen to me," Harry said to the owl. "We don't want to hurt you. We just want to know what you're carrying on your talons. It's some kind of poison. You scratched one of our professors, and now she's very sick."

The owl screeched at him.

"He says he doesn't give a hoot," Jeremy said dryly.

"There's no way out of here," Harry said, staring at the owl. "We've locked all the windows. You can't get out. All we want to do is take a sample off your talons, so we can find out what the poison is. If you cooperate with us, we promise we'll let you go when we're done."

The owl screeched again, the feathers on its face standing out so that it looked like an angry black demon.

Harry looked down at Jeremy. "I take it that was a 'No!'"

"Um, he just told you to go have an inappropriate relationship with your mother," Jeremy said.

Harry looked at Cho. Their eyes met, and they silently agreed--they would have to take the owl by force. Harry shifted the pole of his net to his right hand, getting a firm grip on it. The owl looked back and forth between them, glaring. It knew they were about to pull something.

Harry looked straight at the owl, and slapped his thigh twice with his left hand to get Cho's attention. Knowing that she was now watching his hand for the signal, he closed it into a fist. He put one finger out, then a second, and then a third.

On the third finger, Harry and Cho leaped forward on their brooms. Harry guessed, correctly, that Cho would try an overhead stroke with her net, so he tried an underhand stroke with his, hoping to trap the owl between the two nets. It almost worked. The owl jumped from the window just as the rim of Cho's net pinned its tail feathers against the glass. Harry swung his net up and missed the owl by inches. Leaving half its tail behind, the rogue owl swooped between the two broomstick fliers and dropped down to one side of the room, trying to land on the wall perches. But the owls along the wall screeched and bellowed at the rogue, letting it know that it was not welcome there. The rogue owl reeled across the room to the other side, but the owls perched along the opposite wall repelled it in a similar fashion.

Harry and Cho turned on their brooms and were about to go after the owl again, when Jeremy shouted, "Wait!" They looked down to see that he had his McGuffin out, the thin leather straps twisted loosely around his fingers, the sand-filled pouches hanging down by his side.

"Get in the middle of the room where the owl can see you," he told them. "But give it a wide opening between the two of you, so it can fly right up the center of the room. I'll be waiting for it when it comes back."

Harry and Cho flew to the middle of the room, halfway between the entrance and the back wall, and hovered low on their brooms, about twenty feet apart. At the Owlery door, Hagrid was swiping at the rogue with his net again.

Harry looked back. Jeremy was spinning the McGuffin in a wide arc over his head, the leather-encased sand balls whipping the air like helicopter blades. "Hagrid, chase it down here again! Now!"

Hagrid heard. He slashed at the owl with his net, driving it away from the door. The owl turned and fled once more down the length of the room. Harry and Cho pulled back on their brooms to let the owl fly straight between them.

Suddenly, a small gray feathery missile shot down from the rafters and attacked the rogue owl. It was Pigwidgeon! He latched his claws into the back of the rogue owl's head and held on for all he was worth. The two owls spun in the air like a whirlwind, the rogue owl shrieking, Pigwidgeon twittering insanely. As Harry watched them in disbelief, the McGuffin came flying across the room.

Jeremy's throw was perfect, but he hit the wrong owl. The leather straps of the McGuffin wrapped around Pigwidgeon's body and the sand-filled balls dropped him to the floor! The rogue owl streaked away into the shadows. Jeremy ran up to Pigwidgeon, who was lying on the floor tangled up in the McGuffin. The little owl looked up at him and chirped irately.

"Well, if you'd've stayed out of the way like I told you to, I'd've hit the owl I was aiming for, you bloody fool!" Jeremy shouted.

Why didn't Ron take that stupid owl with him to Romania

, Harry thought. Then, with a jolt, he saw a large black shadow swooping across the floor toward Jeremy.

"Jeremy, behind you!" Harry shouted.

The boy didn't even turn to look. Jeremy dived forward and sommersaulted across the floor as the rogue owl whirled by just above him. Harry watched the rogue as it banked in the air and headed back towards Jeremy. The boy was on his feet in a second, facing the owl as it arrowed straight at him, its deadly talons poised to strike. To Harry's amazement, Jeremy's gloved hands shot up and he caught the flying owl by its legs, stopping its talons an inch from his face.

Jeremy skidded backwards across the floor, bracing himself with his legs as the owl's huge wings flailed about him. Harry dropped down to help him. If Jeremy had been just a little bit bigger, he might have been able to hold on. But the owl, sensing that a quick change in its tactics was required, suddenly swooped down to the floor and up again, battering Jeremy with its massive wings. Jeremy was spun off his feet and had to let go. He twisted in the air and came down on his side on the floor, just as Harry landed beside him. The owl darted up to a far corner of the room.

"Damn!" Jeremy shouted, slamming his fist on the floor. "Almost got it!"

"Harry!" Cho shouted from above.

Harry looked up. Cho had trapped the owl in the upper left corner of the room, near the back wall of the Owlery. She was striking at it fervently with her net, the light from the wand in her pocket reeling crazily around the nearby walls. Harry kicked off on his broom and flew up to help her.

As Harry came up behind Cho, the owl in the corner suddenly snapped at Cho's face with its massive beak, just missing her nose. Cho backed away and the owl charged. Its talons caught in her long black hair and she screamed. As she put her left arm up to defend herself, the owl clawed her again and its talon snagged on her sleeve.

With a curse, Cho backhanded the owl hard with her forearm! It flew backwards, tearing out a small chunk of her hair. Bouncing off a nearby wall, the owl tumbled down a few feet, but quickly regained its wings. It dropped under Cho, only to find Harry waiting for it. Harry swung his net towards the rogue but it looped around the net pole and shot up through a square-shaped hole in the ceiling.

Harry looked up at Cho. "Are you all right?! Did it scratch you?!"

"I don't know!" Cho was very pale. She pulled her sleeve up and looked at her arm. Heart thudding, Harry flew up to her. Cho turned her wrist over, staring at it. There was a hole in her sleeve, but there were no scratches on her skin.

"What about my face?" she asked Harry.

"Come here." Hovering beside her, Harry took her face in his gloved hands and looked closely at it. "I don't see anything. I think you're fine."

"Ouch!" Cho seethed. She touched the top of her head, where the owl had torn out a patch of her hair. When she looked at her hand, there was a single small splotch of blood on the finger of her Quidditch glove.

"That was a close one," she said breathlessly. Then she looked at the hole in the ceiling through which the owl had escaped. "Now what do we do?"

They flew to the square-shaped hole and looked up into it. Inside was a long shaft leading up through the Owlery roof. Harry held his lighted wand up to the hole. The shaft rose up about fifteen feet and disappeared into darkness.

"Did it get out?" Cho whispered, referring to the owl. "Is it gone?"

Harry shook his head. "I can hear it moving up there. But how do we get it to come down?"

"You've got to go up to the top of the shaft and force it down."

Harry and Cho looked down to see Jeremy standing on the floor below them. Harry almost laughed. "Are you kidding? If we go up there and try to force it down, it'll tear us to shreds!"

"No, no!" Jeremy pointed up through the square-shaped hole. "That's a ventilation shaft. There's a vent grid at the top of it. It's not big enough for the owl to get out, but it should be big enough for you to stick your wand through it from outside."

He pointed towards the shuttered windows on one side of the room. "One of you's got to go outside, go up on your broom, and find the vent grid at the top of the shaft. Then you stick your wand through the grid and light it. That'll force the owl to come back down."

He pointed to the hole in the ceiling again. "Then the other one of you waits under the hole there on your broom, and as the owl comes down and out of the shaft, you catch it."

Harry and Cho looked at each other. "I'll go up," said Cho.

Harry nodded. Cho dropped down to the floor, and moved towards the nearest shuttered window. "Here," she said to Jeremy. "You hold my broom while I crawl out on the ledge."

"Careful, Cho. It's very slick out there," Harry reminded her. "Jeremy, you sit in the window and tell me when she reaches the top of the shaft. Cho, you signal Jeremy when you're about to light your wand, so he can tell me."

Cho opened the shutters of the window. She very carefully climbed up on the windowsill and backed out onto the ledge outside. Jeremy passed her Firebolt out through the narrow opening.

Her head in the window, Cho looked up at Harry. They shared a look in which she silently wished him good luck. Then Cho disappeared. Jeremy jumped up and sat on the windowsill. He gripped the edges of the window and leaned out, watching Cho's ascent. Harry could hear the rain, still coming down outside.

"Hagrid, bring me that burlap sack with the drawstring," he said. Hagrid walked across the floor and stood under Harry. He tossed the heavy sack up to him. Harry dropped his pole net and Hagrid caught it.

Harry took hold of his wand, which was still stuck in his belt, and whispered, "Nox." The light on his wand went out. He opened the burlap sack and sat waiting on his broom by the shaft entrance.

"She's at the top of the shaft," Jeremy reported from the window. "She wants to know if you're ready."

"Yes, I'm ready," Harry said, tensely.

Jeremy signaled Cho. "She's putting her wand through the vent grill. She's going to light it--NOW!"

From up the shaft, he heard Cho shout, "Lumos!" A bright light blazed at the top of the shaft, and there was a long, terrible screech. The owl was coming! Harry thrust the open sack around the shaft entrance.

The owl plunged out of the shaft and slammed into the bottom of the sack like a dropped anvil. The opening of the sack snapped shut and the drawstring looped around Harry's fingers. Harry reeled downward with the impact, and then was suddenly yanked horizontally right and left as the owl tried to fly inside the sack.

"Whoa! Hey! Stop!" Harry shouted. The owl whirled and spun around his head in a wild circle. Harry held on, hugging his broom with his knees. An image flashed in his mind of a track-and-field event that he had once seen on television years ago--the Hammer Throw! A muscular man stood in the shot putter's circle and spun around like a top while swinging a heavy lead ball on a chain over his head, then released the ball so that it soared away over the track field. The difference here was, Harry couldn't let go of the sack. His fingers were caught in the drawstring.

He let out a yell as the owl inside the sack lurched to one side and nearly dashed him against a cross-beam. At the last instant, the owl veered back in the opposite direction and jerked Harry away from the beam. But they were now heading towards another cross-section of rafters that spanned the center of the room.

The owl flew over the rafters; a second later, Harry flew under them. The empty part of the sack, between Harry and the owl, caught on the cross-beam in the center of the room and wrapped around it like a tether. The bottom of the sack, the part containing the owl, swung back and smacked against the other side of the beam. Under the beam, Harry was yanked backwards like a fish on a line. His broom flew out from under him and crashed into the wall at the far end of the Owlery.

Harry dangled twenty feet above the Owlery floor, his fingers clutching the drawstring on the sack. Just above his head, the empty part of the sack was draped over the top of the beam like a hook. The bottom of the sack, with the stunned owl inside, hung down across the other side of the beam like a counterweight. As Harry watched, horrified, the bottom of the sack started to slip up towards the top of the beam. At the same time, gravity was pulling Harry down towards the floor. In a few seconds, he knew, his weight would pull the sack back up and over the top of the beam and he would fall.

"Drop, Harry!" Hagrid's voice shouted from underneath him. "Jest let go and drop! I'll catch yeh!"

Harry let go of the string and dropped. He landed on Hagrid, and they both crashed to the floor with an impact that shook the walls. The sack containing the owl fell from the rafters and landed with a heavy thud on the floor next to them. A second later, the air was suddenly filled with flying owls, screeching and howling as they headed for the single open window. Jeremy jumped aside as the owls poured out, apparently preferring the cold and rain outside to the noise and pandemonium inside the Owlery.

Harry knew he must still be alive--dead people didn't feel this kind of pain! Lying on Hagrid's chest, he watched the last of the owls exit through the open window.

"Ohh, I'm gettin' too old for this!" Hagrid groaned.

Harry turned his head. The burlap sack lay in a heap on the floor to his right. He could see that the rogue owl was still moving inside.

"Jeremy!" Harry shouted. "Tie the bag off, quick! The owl's still awake in there!"

Jeremy hurdled over Hagrid's massive legs and pounced on the bag. In an instant, he had tied a knot in the drawstring.

"Good," Harry breathed. Hedwig suddenly fluttered down and landed on his stomach, her amber eyes full of worry for her master.

"What are you doing here?" Harry asked, looking at her. He thumbed towards her nest box. "Go on, Mama. Get back over there and sit on those eggs. I'm fine."

He patted her head. Hedwig nipped his finger, and flew back to her nest box. Harry looked at Jeremy. "Where did the other owls go?"

Jeremy sat on the floor next to the burlap sack, catching his breath. "I heard 'em say something about finding a nice cold damp hollow tree in the Forbidden Forest where they could all get some peace and quiet."

"Yeh can get up off my chest any time it suits yeh, Harry," Hagrid growled.

"I'll take it under consideration," Harry muttered. His pain was starting to ease, but he was still too exhausted to move.

Cho Chang crawled in through the open window, reaching back to pull in her Firebolt. She looked around, wide-eyed.

"Did you get it?" Then she saw Harry and Hagrid lying on the floor, and smiled. "Or did it get you?"

Jeremy held up the end of the burlap sack containing the rogue owl. He had just put another knot in the drawstring.

"I think we'll call this one a tie," he said.