Brighter Than the Sun

Chapter Seventy-One

"Absolutely."

"Okay, then."

"Just please don't talk about eggs."

"As of now, I don't know what an egg is."

And so, on Thursday night, I changed into a one-piece swimsuit that I was very glad I'd brought (the Aphrodite girls had raised me to always be prepared when it came to clothing. They claimed that even if I was going to the moon, I should have an outfit for every occasion). Then put my robes back on over the swimsuit and waited in the Common Room for Harry to come downstairs with the cloak and the Marauders' Map. When he did, I ducked under the cloak and we waited for Ron to open the portrait hole. As we crept out past Ron, he whispered a quiet "good luck."

Harry had some difficulty holding the egg and the map at the same time, so I took the egg for him so he could read the map in the moonlit corridors. When we reached the statue of Boris the Bewildered, a lost-looking wizard with his gloves on the wrong hands, Harry located the right door, leaned close to it, and muttered "Pine fresh," which I figured was an appropriate password for a bathroom. The door creaked open. We slipped inside, bolted the door behind us, and pulled off the Invisibility Cloak, looking around.

"Wow," I said, my voice echoing softly around the room. The place looked like the bathroom on Olympus — and I'd been there before, so I could say that accurately. It was softly lit by a gorgeous candle-filled chandelier, and everything was made of white marble, including what looked like an empty, rectangular swimming pool sunk into the middle of the floor. About a hundred golden taps stood all around the pool's edges, each with a differently colored jewel set into its handle. There was also a diving board. A diving board.

Long white linen curtains hung at the windows; a large pile of fluffy white towels sat in a corner, and there was a single golden-framed painting on the wall. It featured a blonde mermaid who was fast asleep on a rock, her long hair over her face. It fluttered every time she snored.

"Wow," I said again, watching the mermaid.

Harry moved forward, looking around, his footsteps echoing off the walls. "Cedric's got to be having me on. It's amazing, but how's it supposed to help me figure out the egg?" Despite his uncertainties, he put two of the towels, the cloak, the map, and the egg at the side of the swimming pool-sized bath. While he did this, I knelt down and turned on a few of the taps. Each one carried different sorts of bubble bath mixed with the water, though it wasn't normal bubble bath. One tap gushed pink and blue bubbles the size of footballs; another poured ice-white foam so thick that I thought it would have supported my weight if I tried to test it; a third sent heavily perfumed purple clouds hovering over the surface of the water. I spent a while turning the taps on and off, particularly enjoying the effect of one whose jet bounced off the surface of the water in large arcs.

"It would be worth becoming a prefect just to be able to use this bathroom," I told Harry, watching the satisfying arcs of the tap. "It's like a spa, and — oh, Morrigan, what are you doing?"

Harry, who'd already taken off all of his clothes save for his boxers (which he'd also been about to take off) froze. "What?"

"Why are you getting naked?"

"It's a bath."

"Yeah, but I'm here, too! Do you really think I want to see your naked —"

"What did you expect me to do?"

"Wear a swimsuit!"

"Ash, we go to a boarding school located in Scotland, which snows during the fall and winter months. Why the bloody hell would I bring a swimsuit?"