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Aurora Areli
ON THURSDAY NIGHT, HARRY stayed true to his word and went off to the prefects' bathroom to follow Cedric's advice: take a bath with the golden egg. Since Hermione thought he had the clue worked out already, Ron and I were tasked with opening the portrait hole from the outside as to not draw suspicion from it opening and closing by itself (Harry was using his Invisibility Cloak).
Harry took a very long time getting back, so long that Ron and I couldn't stay awake any longer, and went off to bed. We both knew Harry would tell us everything that happened the following day.
And we were right. On Friday, Harry, Ron, Hermione and I were sitting at the very back of the Charms class with a table to ourselves. We were supposed to be practising the opposite of the Summoning Charm — the Banishing Charm — but were instead discussing Harry's discoveries from the previous night.
"You said you'd already worked out that egg clue!" Hermione said indignantly, when Harry had explained to us all that had happened.
"Keep your voice down!" Harry said crossly. "I just need to — sort of fine-tune it, all right?"
Owing to the potential for nasty accidents when objects kept flying across the room, Professor Flitwick had given each student a stack of cushions to practise banishing, the theory being that they wouldn't hurt anyone if they went off target. It was a good theory, but it wasn't working very well. Neville's aim was so poor that he kept sending much heavier things than cushions flying across the room — Professor Flitwick, for instance.
"Just forget the egg for a minute, all right?" Harry hissed, as Professor Flitwick went whizzing resignedly past us, landing on top of a large cabinet. "I'm trying to tell you about Snape and Moody . . ."
Charms class was ideal cover for a private conversation, as everyone was having far too much fun to pay us any attention. Over the past half hour, Harry had told us all about how, while he was in the Prefects' bathroom, Moaning Myrtle had shown up and told him to listen to the egg underwater, where he was able to hear the clue.
On the way back to Gryffindor Tower, he fell into a trick stair, where he was almost discovered by Filch and Snape, the former believing that Peeves had stolen a golden egg when Harry had dropped it and made a huge racket. He also dropped the Marauder's Map, but luckily Moody had shown up and, because he could see through Invisibility Cloaks, covered for Harry and told Filch and Snape the Map was his. Afterwards, Harry had allowed him to borrow the Map, because he felt he owed Moody a favour for not ratting him out.
"Snape said Moody's searched his office as well?" Ron whispered, his eyes alight with interest as he Banished a cushion with a sweep of his wand and knocked Parvati's hat off. "What . . . d'you reckon Moody's here to keep an eye on Snape as well as Karkaroff?"
