Hermione cried, "Katie! You're back! Are you okay?"
It was indeed Katie Bell, looking completely healthy and surrounded by her jubilant friends.
"I'm really well!" she said happily. "They let me out of St. Mungo's on Monday, I had a couple of days at home with Mum and Dad and then came back here this morning. Leanne was just telling me about McLaggen and the last match, Harry..."
"Yeah," said Harry, "well, now you're back and Ron's fit, we'll have a decent chance of thrashing Ravenclaw, which means we could still be in the running for the Cup. Listen, Katie..."
He dropped his voice as Katie's friends started gathering up their things; apparently they were late for Transfiguration.
"... that necklace... can you remember who gave it to you now?"
"No," said Katie, shaking her head ruefully. "Everyone's been asking me, but I haven't got a clue. The last thing I remember was walking into the ladies' in the Three Broomsticks."
"You definitely went into the bathroom, then?" said Hermione.
"Well, I know I pushed open the door," said Katie, "so I suppose whoever Imperiused me was standing just behind it. After that, my memory's a blank until about two weeks ago in St. Mungo's. Listen, I'd better go, I wouldn't put it past McGonagall to give me lines even if it is my first day back..."
She caught up her bag and books and hurried after her friends, leaving us to sit down at a window table and ponder what she had told us.
"So it must have been a girl or a woman who gave Katie the necklace," said Hermione, "to be in the ladies' bathroom."
"Or someone who looked like a girl or a woman," said Harry. "Don't forget, there was a cauldron full of Polyjuice Potion at Hogwarts. We know some of it got stolen..."
"That makes a lot of sense," Jason nodded. "If Crabbe and Goyle drained a little bit of it-"
I shivered, imagining Crabbes and Goyles skipping around the castle in gowns.
"I think I'm going to take another swig of Felix," said Harry, "and have a go at the Room of Requirement again."
"That would be a complete waste of potion," said Hermione flatly, putting down the copy of Spellman's Syllabary she had just taken out of her bag. "Luck can only get you so far, Harry. The situation with Slughorn was different; you always had the ability to persuade him, you just needed to tweak the circumstances a bit. Luck isn't enough to get you through a powerful enchantment, though. Don't go wasting the rest of that potion! You'll need all the luck you can get if Dumbledore takes you along with him..." She dropped her voice to a whisper.
"Couldn't we make some more?" Ron asked Harry, ignoring Hermione. "It'd be great to have a stock of it... have a look in the book... "
"It's not easy to make, like I said," I told Ron. "Alex and I took six months to brew it. The ingredients are extremely costly as well... and if you get it wrong..."
"Typical," said Ron. "What did you use your stock for?"
"We gave it away to the nurses and healers at St. Mungo's," I said. "Charity donation kind of thing."
The only person who was not particularly pleased to see Katie Bell back at school was Dean Thomas, because he would no longer be required to fill her place as Chaser. He took the blow stoically enough when Harry told him, merely grunting and shrugging.
Interest in the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw game was running extremely high throughout the school, as May slid through gently, for the match would decide the Championship, which was still wide open. If Gryffindor beat Ravenclaw by a margin of three hundred points then they would win the Championship.
If they won by less than three hundred points, they would come second to Ravenclaw; if they lost by a hundred points they would be third behind Hufflepuff and if they lost by more than a hundred, they would be in fourth place and nobody Harry would be dubbed 'he who had captained Gryffindor to their first bottom-of-the-table defeat in two centuries'.
The run-up to this crucial match had all the usual features: members of rival Houses attempting to intimidate opposing teams in the corridors; unpleasant chants about individual players being rehearsed loudly as they passed; the team members themselves either swaggering around enjoying all the attention or else dashing into bathrooms between classes to throw up.
In the midst of all his preoccupations, Harry had not forgotten his other ambition: finding out what Malfoy was up to in the Room of Requirement. He was still checking the Marauder's Map, and as he was unable to locate Malfoy on it, deduced that Malfoy was still spending plenty of time within the room.
He kept asking me and Jason on plans to somehow trick the Room of Requirement into leading him to Malfoy. We racked our brains hard to find nothing.
Although Harry was losing hope that he would ever succeed in getting inside the Room of Requirement, he attempted it whenever he was in the vicinity, but no matter how he reworded his request, the wall remained firmly doorless.
A few days before the match against Ravenclaw, Harry and I were walking down to dinner alone from the common room, Ron having rushed off into a nearby bathroom to throw up yet again, and Hermione having dashed off to see Professor Vector about a mistake she thought she might have made in her last Arithmancy essay. Jason was snoring, for a change.
"Harry!" I called. "You're going to the seventh floor- not the Great Hall."
"Oh," Harry realized. "Oh, sorry- I was just looking at the map- wait- Percy, look at this."
His eyes were wide. I ran to him and looked at the map. Malfoy's tiny, labeled dot was standing in a boys' bathroom on the floor below, accompanied, not by Crabbe or Goyle, but by Moaning Myrtle.
We exchanged looks of serious puzzlement.
CRASH!
A suit of armor fell to the ground as my cat, Blu crashed into it. I frowned. "You go on, I'll catch up."
Harry nodded, running through the stairs to the floor down.
"Reparo!" I muttered hastily at the statue a couple of times as the suit of armor slowly flew back into position.
"MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!"
My hands started to shake. Leaving the armor at a mid-floating stance, I dashed down the stairs into the bathroom and opened the door with a small bang.
The scene in front of me was horrible.
Blood spurted from Malfoy's face and chest as though he had been slashed with an invisible sword. He staggered backward and collapsed onto the waterlogged floor with a great splash, his wand falling from his limp right hand.
"I-I don't," Harry stuttered.
I looked around urgently. Harry stared at the boy, his face in terror, his hands shaking.
I straightened up. "Harry- go get Will, at once! He'll be in the Runes class- go now!"
Harry nodded, and dashed out of the bathroom at once.
I prayed to my father and looked at the boy. His face was contorted in pain. "Alex," I muttered, "help me, please."
The door opened again, and Harry and Will rushed over.
"What happened?" Will asked, kneeling down and taking his pulse. "What curse did you use, Harry?"
"It was um- in the book- Sectumsempra-" Harry muttered.
Will turned pale. "It's too deep- even ambrosia will take time," he said. "Unless..."
He turned to Harry with a look of hesitation. His eyes were glassy, as though he was having trouble believing in what he had just done.
"Will?" I asked. "Tell me.. unless what?"
"You have to do it, Percy."
I stuttered. "W-what?"
"We're in water," Will said. "There's no sunlight here- so only you have an advantage here."
I looked at the boy with pity. He reminded me of Luke- just a little bit. Someone who had taken the wrong path by mistake. "Alright," I said. I put my hand over his wound.
Draco frowned in pain.
"Heal," I muttered to myself. I felt the water flow into the wound, cleansing it. The flow of blood seemed to ease at once. The water pulled his skin together and sealed the wound.
I pulled away my hand. "Someone's coming."
The door banged open behind us: Snape had burst into the room, his face livid. Pushing Harry roughly aside, he knelt over Malfoy, drew his wand, and traced it over the now better healed wounds Harry's curse had made, muttering an incantation that sounded almost like song. The flow of blood seemed to ease; Snape wiped the residue from Malfoy's face and repeated his spell.
Harry was still watching, horrified by what he had done, barely aware that he too was soaked in blood and water. Moaning Myrtle was still sobbing and wailing overhead. When Snape had performed his counter-curse for the third time, he half-lifted Malfoy into a standing position.
"You need the hospital wing. There may be a certain amount of scarring, but if you take dittany immediately we might avoid even that... come..."
He supported Malfoy across the bathroom, turning at the door to say in a voice of cold fury, "And you, Potter... You wait here for me."
I was shivering, and completely hungry. "Can we go?"
"No."
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