Aziraphale was frozen in place with his leg bent painfully underneath him and his best friend pressed awkwardly into him. There was hardly any space between their faces in the shadows.

And suddenly Crowley was leaning forward, closing the gap between them. Aziraphale's breath caught in his throat, he felt his heart hitch and then race even more fiercely than before…

And then the door to the supply closet was yanked open.

A tiny figure was silhouetted in the light from the corridor—much too small to be Filch. The figure slipped in and shut the door behind him before promptly tripping over Crowley and falling on top of both the other occupants of the closet.

"Ouch!" Aziraphale exclaimed.

"Sorry," came a squeak of a voice.

"Adam?" Aziraphale heard Crowley demand. "What the hell are you—"

"Shh!" Aziraphale ordered, as another set of footsteps were heard from outside—a heavier tread this time.

The three young wizards held their breaths as the shuffling steps grew closer, and closer…and then moved past the closet and faded down the corridor.

As one they released their breaths. After a moment more, Aziraphale, trying to get his heart to slow to a reasonable pace, spoke up. "Can you two please get off me now? I've lost feeling in my leg."

They extricated themselves as best as they could, knocking over brooms and buckets in the process and making enough ruckus, in Aziraphale's opinion, to bring all the professors of Hogwarts swooping down on them.

"Okay," Crowley said as he helped Aziraphale stand up, "Adam, what are you doing out of Gryffindor Tower this late?"

"Followin' you, of course," Adam answered in a defensive tone. "I heard you two, you're goin' to see the hippogriffs. I wanna see them too!"

"No way, kid, back to the common room you go," Crowley said.

"Crowley, we have to walk him back, we can't just send him off on his own," Aziraphale chided. "Just admit this idea was a silly one and go see the hippogriffs in the morning."

"We aren't supposed to go looking for them; if I do it in the morning I'm bound to be stopped," Crowley argued.

"And I'm not going to bed," Adam interrupted. "I'm coming with you!"

Crowley ran his fingers through his disheveled hair. "No, Adam, no use you getting in trouble too." He opened the closet door and stepped out, almost tripping over a mop in the process. Aziraphale and Adam filed out, and he shut it again with a scowl.

"You can't make me go—" Adam started to argue, and then suddenly stopped. "Yeah, you're right, I'll go back."

Aziraphale and Crowley watched as he headed off the way they'd come. Aziraphale glanced at Crowley. "He's not actually heading back, is he?"

"Of course not." Crowley sighed. "Adam, we know you're just going to keep trailing us, so…come along, I guess. But keep quiet."

Aziraphale fixed Crowley with his most disapproving look. "It's one thing if you land the two of us in detention, but a first year? Really."

"Hey, you know as well as I do we can't stop him."

"We," Aziraphale grumbled, "couldall return to the safety of our common rooms, and then none of us would get in trouble."

"And where would the fun in that be?" Crowley said with a grin, and led them down a side corridor, a muttered "Lumos" igniting his wandtip to light their way. "Here, I'll even let you hold the map if you'll stop your whining."

"Ooh!" Aziraphale squealed despite himself, eagerly taking the proffered parchment.

"Make sure to keep an eye out for teachers and prefects and the like."

Aziraphale looked at the map as they continued their trek in the dark, his own wand lit to illuminate the carefully depicted rooms and halls and figures.

"Hang on," he suddenly said, "there is another dot near us, Crowley. …Who's Pippin Galadriel Moon—hey!"

Crowley had seized the map from him. "Well, that's not a teacher, at least," he said, looking at the dot. "Whoever it is, though, they're right behind us."

"I know that name," Adam piped up. "Pepper, you can go ahead and show yourself," he called quietly into the shadowed hall from which they'd come.

Slowly, a girl with vividly red, cropped hair emerged from the darkness, a defiant look on her face. "If Adam doesn't have to go back, I sure don't," she declared, glaring up at the two fifth years, who were shining their wands at her like spotlights. "And get that light out of my eyes."

"Is everyone in the whole bloody castle following us?" Crowley groaned. "Well, join the parade if you really want to, but keep in mind that Az and I are not responsible for you if we're all caught."

They continued onward, Crowley in the lead, the two first years in the middle, and Aziraphale trailing along behind them, the map in hand. The Ravenclaw was too busy poring over the map—occasionally running into walls and tripping over his own feet as he tried to walk and study it at the same time—to pay attention to where they were headed. He bumped into Pepper as Crowley brought their little band to a halt.

"Hey!" she complained. "Watch it!"

"Sorry, dear," he murmured abstractedly as he finally looked up from the map. To his surprise, Crowley had led them not to the first floor, but to the fifth. They stood in front of the decidedly unflattering statue of Gregory the Smarmy.

"Are we sightseeing now?" Aziraphale asked dryly.

"This," Crowley announced, choosing to ignore the comment, "is a secret passage leading out of the castle; it'll take us pretty close to the greenhouses."

He approached the statue and bent Gregory's upraised right arm at the elbow, whilst giving Gregory's bulbous marble nose an expert rap with his wand.

There was the groaning sound that comes when rock that would prefer to stay where it is, thank you very much, is forced to shift. Behind the statue, a sizable hole had been made in what had been a solid stone wall.

Crowley motioned them in, and they entered the narrow passage one by one. With a flick of his wand aimed at the tunnel's entrance, the wall resealed itself, leaving them in complete darkness but for the gentle glow still streaming from Aziraphale's wand. Crowley removed his sunglasses and tucked them into a pocket of his robes; it was too dark for them in here.

"It's real dark," Adam stated, a tremor evident in his voice.

"No need to be a baby about it," Pepper told him.

"I'm not being a baby!" Adam protested indignantly. "I'm just observin' that it's dark, is all. Can't I make a simple observation without gettin' accused of being a baby?"

It was too dim for anyone to notice Aziraphale roll his eyes once more* as Crowley interrupted the first years' argument. "Do you two know the lumos charm yet?"

They shook their heads.

"No worries, it's a simple one; wands sort of know how to do it instinctively," he explained. "All you have to do is say is—" here he held out his own wand— "Lumos. There, see?" he ended as his wand's tip blossomed into gold-white light, mingling with the beam Aziraphale's was casting to further illuminate the tunnel.

"Lumos," the two younger Gryffindors murmured in unison, and grinned as their wandtips too began to glow.

"There we go," Crowley said; "now it's plenty bright to get by, yeah?" Aziraphale smiled gently at the encouraging tone his friend was using with the first years.

The tunnel wound its way gradually downward. Some areas were a bit bumpy, and at one point it got so narrow that Crowley could barely squeeze through, let alone Aziraphale, but at last the tunnel ended suddenly, their way blocked by a wall of earth.

"Is it a dead end?" Aziraphale wondered worriedly, but Crowley shone his wand upward, where a trapdoor was set in the low ceiling. He leapt for the handle dangling down from it and tugged, and the trapdoor fell open.

"This is the tricky part," Crowley remarked, and swung himself up, grabbing at the edge of the trapdoor's hole and pulling himself through to settle in the grass above.

"Okay, Pepper, up you come," he called down, lowering his arms for her. Aziraphale gave her a boost, and Crowley lifted her up and out. Adam went next, leaving only Aziraphale.

"I could probably try and pull myself up," he said doubtfully.

"Nah, Az, you're about as athletic as a gnome," came Crowley's voice from above. "Just grab onto my hands, I can pull you up, no problem."

"Okay..." Aziraphale made a running leap and grabbed onto his friend's forearms; Crowley grunted under the weight, but managed after a moment's strain to hoist the pudgy Ravenclaw into the cool night air.

"Merlin, Az," he panted, rubbing his shoulders, "maybe you should lay off the pumpkin pasties."

"And maybe you should keep rude comments to yourself," Aziraphale huffed irritably, as Pepper giggled.

They had emerged into a clump of hedges between greenhouses five and six. The moon was a fat sliver in the sky, having begun its decline from full a little over a week ago. Stars hung about it and shone palely through the thin and scattered cover of the clouds.

Quietly, they trekked across the grounds towards Hagrid's hut, a small silhouette with smoke issuing cheerily from its chimney against the forbidding backdrop of the Forbidden Forest.

"I think they're being kept somewhere along the edge of the Forest," Crowley said. "So we'll just have to walk to find out."

Adam didn't quite manage to stifle a yawn as they made their way along the border of the Forest.

"Tired?" Aziraphale said sharply, suddenly remembering that he was supposed to be disapproving of this whole escapade, and especially of the two first years' presence.

"No," Adam replied quickly, and livened his step to catch up to Crowley and Pepper.

Pepper was pointing her glowing wand towards the trees, peering curiously among the trunks.

"I heard centaurs live in there," Aziraphale heard her telling Crowley. "Is that true?"

"It's a theory," Crowley replied.

"So, maybe?" Adam asked.

"Yeah. It's a possibility, but it's unconfirmed."

"Wicked," Adam breathed. "...Er, what exactly are centaurs?"

"Men with the bodies of horses," was Crowley's simplistic response; Aziraphale found himself rolling his eyes yet again from where he walked behind the three others.

"You said men," Pepper said, "but I bet there are women centaurs too. Are there?"

"Um...maybe?" Crowley responded in a nonplussed tone.

"Well then," Pepper asserted, "you should of said people, not men."

"Right, sorry."

The edge of the Forest bent slightly, and suddenly a paddock came into view. Several silhouettes, larger than horses or lions, stood regal and still in the moonlight spilling through the clouds: the hippogriffs.


Footnotes:

*He'd rolled his eyes so many times already tonight that he really did run a risk of straining them.