Chapter 12.

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The stars, save for Orion rested, and inside the Gryffindor Tower they, for the whole night diminished their tiredness. The castle was being searched again and they all stayed awake when the night was rushing, blue and black until whiteness would come crawling about, and they waited to hear whether he'd been caught. That didn't happen. At dawn came Professor McGonagall and told them he'd escaped. She had a grave look on her face when she spoke. They looked about toward her and they did not cool down from then on.

When skipped small hours and the sun was up in every corner of visible Earth everywhere they went were signs of tighter security. You could see Professor Flitwick showing the front doors a large picture of Black for it to recognize. You could see Filch bustling about the corridors, boarding everything from cracks in the walls to mouse holes. Sir Cadogan had been released and his portrait had been taken back to the seventh floor. And the Fat Lady was back and she had been expertly restored but was still timorous and had agreed to return to her job only on condition that she was given extra protection thus a bunch of surly security trolls had been hired to guard her, pacing about the corridor and grunting and staring without intelligence to their big dark eyes. But brute force sometimes for the best should be choreographed into that whole complex puzzle.

Harry noticed that the statue of the one-eyed witch on the third floor remained unguarded and unblocked and it seemed that Fred and George and Harry and Ron and Hermione and Y/N were the only ones with the knowledge of it existing.

"You reckon we should tell someone?" Harry said to Ron.

"We know he's not coming in through Honeyduke's," Ron said, waving his hand. "We would've heard if the shop had been broken into."

"Reckon you're right."

"That I am."

That was lucky. If the one-eyed witch was boarded up too, Harry could never go into Hogsmeade again.

Ron had become a celebrity only hours after what happened. For the first time in his life he was more broadly seen than Harry and seen was that he enjoyed that. The events shook him but nonetheless gladly would recall the details as if he were not at all upturned with memories.

"I was asleep and I heard this ripping noise and I thought it was in my dream, you know? But then there was this draft. I woke up and one side of the hangings on my bed had been pulled down. I rolled over and I saw him standing over me like a skeleton with loads of filthy hair, holding this great long knife. Must've been twelve inches and he looked at me and I looked at him and then I yelled and he scampered."

A group of young girls departed after that. Harry remained with Ron.

"Why did he run?" Ron said to Harry.

"I wonder too," Harry said. "Why did he not come to me instead?"

"Beats me."

"He must've known he'd have a job getting back out of the castle once you'd yelled and woken people up. He would've had to kill the whole House to get back through the portrait hole. Then he would've met the teachers."

Neville was in total disgrace. Professor McGonagall was so furious with him that she'd banned him from all future Hogsmeade visits, she'd given him a detention, and she'd forbade anyone to give him the password to the tower. Neville was forced to wait outside the common room every night for somebody to let him in while the security trolls leered unpleasantly at him. None of these punishments however came close to matching the one his grandmother had in store for him. Two days after Black's breakin she sent Neville a Howler.

The school owls swooped into the Great Hall carrying the mail as usual and Neville choked as a huge barn owl landed in front of him, a scarlet envelope clutched in its beak. Harry and Ron who were sitting opposite him recognized the letter as a Howler at once. Ron had got one from his mother the year before.

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