Emma Potter

66: Sweets and Secrets

A pair of feet was coming down the staircase. Harry and I leapt behindan enormous crate and waited for the footsteps to pass. We heardthe man shifting boxes against the opposite wall. We might not getanother chance — 

Quickly and silently, Harry and I dodged out from our hiding placeand climbed the stairs; looking back, we saw an enormous backsideand shiny bald head, buried in a box. 

Harry  and I reached the door at thetop of the stairs, slipped through it, and found ourselves behind thecounter of Honeydukes — we ducked, crept sideways, and thenstraightened up. 

Honeydukes was so crowded with Hogwarts students that noone looked twice at Harry or me. We edged among them, lookingaround, and suppressed a laugh as we imagined the look that wouldspread over Dudley's piggy face if he could see where Harry and I were now. 

There were shelves upon shelves of the most succulent-lookingsweets imaginable. Creamy chunks of nougat, shimmering pinksquares of coconut ice, fat, honey-colored toffees; hundreds of different kinds of chocolate in neat rows; there was a large barrel ofEvery Flavor Beans, and another of Fizzing Whizbees, the levitating sherbert balls that Ron had mentioned; along yet anotherwall were "Special Effects" sweets: Drooble's Best Blowing Gum(which filled a room with bluebell-colored bubbles that refused topop for days), the strange, splintery Toothflossing Stringmints, tinyblack Pepper Imps ("breathe fire for your friends!"), Ice Mice("hear your teeth chatter and squeak!"), peppermint creams shapedlike toads ("hop realistically in the stomach!"), fragile sugar-spunquills, and exploding bonbons.

 Harry and I squeezed ourselves through a crowd of sixth years and sawa sign hanging in the farthest corner of the shop (Unusual Tastes).Ron and Hermione were standing underneath it, examining a trayof blood-flavored lollipops. Harry and I sneaked up behind them. 

"Ugh, no, Harry or Emma won't want one of those, they're for vampires, Iexpect," Hermione was saying. 

"How about these?" said Ron, shoving a jar of Cockroach Clusters under Hermione's nose. 

"Definitely not," said Harry.

 Ron nearly dropped the jar. I laughed.

Harry!Emma" squealed Hermione. "What are you doing here?How — how did you — ?" 

"Wow!" said Ron, looking very impressed, "you've learned toApparate!"

 " 'Course we haven't," said Harry.

 He dropped his voice so thatnone of the sixth years could hear him and told them all about theMarauder's Map. 

"How come Fred and George never gave it to me!" said Ron,outraged. "I'm their brother!"

 "But Emma isn't going to keep it!" said Hermione, as thoughthe idea were ludicrous. "She's going to hand it in to ProfessorMcGonagall, aren't you, Emma?"

 "No, I'm not!" I scoffed. 

"Are you mad?" said Ron, goggling at Hermione. "Hand insomething that good?" 

"If I hand it in, I'll have to say where I got it! Filch would knowFred and George had nicked it!" 

"But what about Sirius Black?" Hermione hissed. "He could beusing one of the passages on that map to get into the castle! Theteachers have got to know!"

 "He can't be getting in through a passage," I said quickly."There are seven secret tunnels on the map, right? Fred and Georgereckon Filch already knows about four of them. And of the otherthree — one of them's caved in, so no one can get through it. Oneof them's got the Whomping Willow planted over the entrance, soyou can't get out of it. And the one I just came through — well —it's really hard to see the entrance to it down in the cellar, so unlesshe knew it was there . . ."