lyra | harry potter

twenty | romilda vane

THE END OF WINTER BREAK BROUGHT A PLETHORA OF new assignments from their professors at Hogwarts. Lyra sat in the Gryffindor common room with Hermione, who had let her in so that they could work on their homework together. The boys of course had decided that it could wait, as it wasn't due for another few days, but Hermione always did her work early and Lyra didn't feel like trying to rush last-minute.

"So you and Seamus were a bust, huh?" Hermione asked with a small smirk on her face.

"There wasn't really a 'me and Seamus' to begin with," Lyra said absentmindedly as she dragged her quill across the parchment,attempting to finish her potions essay. "Wait." She stopped and looked over at her friend. "Who told you that?" Lyra hadn't bothered to talk to Hermione about what happened with she and Seamus at Slughorn's party; after all, Hermione was dealing with her own issues at the moment.

"Harry," Hermione answered, the smirk still etched across her face. "He seemed to be quite pleased with the news, as well. I wonder why."

Lyra's eyebrows rose. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, come on! Don't tell me you haven't noticed!"

"Haven't noticed... what?"

"Goodness gracious, Lyra, aside from Ronald I think you are the most oblivious person I know!" Hermione exclaimed.

She blinked. "...ouch?"

Hermione scoffed and shook her head. "Lyra. How can you not see how utterly smitten—" She cut herself off abruptly as the portrait hole swung open, and in stepped Harry himself, the Marauder's Map clutched in his hands as he eyed it.

He almost didn't even notice the girls sitting there until his gaze drifted toward the Gryffindor Common Room on the map. When he saw Hermione and Lyra's names, his head shot up and he saw them. "Oh. Hey."

"Hey," Lyra said, trying not to let her mind think about what Hermione had been about to tell her just then. "Where've you been?"

He sighed. "Trying to get information out of Slughorn and failing miserably."

Harry then recounted the memory Dumbledore had shown him in the pensieve that afternoon, and how Slughorn had tampered with it. He told them about his conversation with Slughorn in an attempt to find out what had been changed about the memory — what information Tom Riddle had asked him for — only to botch the entire thing and be practically kicked out of Slughorn's classroom.

Hermione snorted and shook her head. "Did you actually expect you could walk up to Ol' Sluggy and ask him to reveal his deepest, darkest secret?" She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Harry, sometimes I think the Daily Prophet should call you the Dim One."

Lyra stifled her laugh into her hand. "Nice."

"You're going to have to persuade him somehow," Hermione told Harry. "And now, I'm afraid, you've made it a lot harder."

Harry sighed, heading toward the stairs to the dorms when he stopped and turned, holding up the Map. "I think Malfoy is leaving the Castle," he told them. "I've seen it. Sometimes... sometimes, he just disappears off the map."

"That's not possible," Hermione denied as Lyra's brows furrowed together thoughtfully. "No one is leaving the castle these days. The map is wrong."

"The map is never wrong," Harry disagreed firmly. He sighed. "Well... goodnight, I guess."

"Goodnight," the girls said together. As he disappeared up the stairs, Lyra turned to Hermione. "You really don't think there's a chance Malfoy is leaving the castle?"