i just wanna say THANKS to all my wonderful reviewers! lol. i now have over 140 reviews! wooo! lol, ok, go read now.


Thump thump thump. Maloy's footsteps echoed loudly in the silent room as he took a couple tentative steps away from the door. Harry and Katie's eyes were not on their surroundings, but on Malfoy; they were watching his every move, dying to know what he was doing in The Room of Requirement so secretively.

But if they hadn't been looking at Malfoy, and had been looking around them, they would have seen an almost completely empty room. About the size of a small bedroom, the room Malfoy had chosen contained bare walls and a bare, wooden floor. Obviously, to Malfoy, it wasn't important what the room looked like, but what was inside it.

And what was inside it was a single, small wooden cabinet. To any random bystander, this would have seemed extremely odd. Why, they would ask, would a single cabinet be standing in an empty room? But Harry and Katie weren't just random bystanders, and they knew exactly what the cabinet was for. And now, they knew exactly why Malfoy was there.

Malfoy continued towards the cabinet, and when he reached it, bent down in front of it. Harry and Katie moved closer as they watched Malfoy pull his wand from the pocket of his robes.

Malfoy opened the door of the cabinet with his free hand, and began to closely examine the inside. He stuck his head in the cabinet, looking closely at the inside walls. Harry and Katie watched his eyes move over every inch of the interior of the cabinet. He ran his fingers over the wood, up and down, across, and diagonal. After half an hour of carefully investigating every wall, every corner, the floor and ceiling of the mysterious cabinet, Malfoy carefully removed his head from the cabinet and stood up, sighing with obvious depression. It was clear that he hadn't found what he was looking for.

Raising his hands and placing them on his waist, Malfoy backed up two steps and stood staring at the little box of wood. So as not to get stepped on by Malfoy, Harry and Katie hastily started to walk backwards- smack into the wall. Normally, this would have gone unnoticed, but the three of them were in a small, confined space, where the slightest noise would disrupt the muted silence of the room. At the small thump that was came from the place on the wall where Harry and Katie had backed into it, Malfoy whirled his head around, his eyes searching for the source of the sudden noise.

Harry and Katie tried their hardest to stay as quiet as possible. Maybe, Malfoy would decide that he was hearing things, and continue to go back to his work. Both Harry and Katie held their breath. If Malfoy could have heard the thump on the wall, then he would surely hear their heavy breathing. With pounding hearts, Harry and Katie remained motionless, silently praying that Malfoy would turn around and go back to the cabinet.

But their luck was against them.

Malfoy turned around all the way and continued to search for whatever had just made the noise. He was obviously suspisious by now- with Harry's foot getting stuck in the door, and now this- Katie and Harry didn't blame him. Or maybe he was just paranoid, because he certaintly knew that he wasn't supposed to be doing what he was doing now.

Harry and Katie watched as Malfoy's eyes peered around the small room. Still holding her breath, Katie's face began to turn a light shade of blue. Her eyes began to water, and when she couldn't take it anymore, she drew in a breath.

Malfoy's eyes, which had been looking in the opposite corner, snapped onto the place where Katie and Harry were standing underneath the invisibility cloak. He had obviously heard Katie breath.

Under the cloak, Harry and Katie were staring unblikingly straight at Malfoy, who stared back, though, not seeing them as they were seeing him.

Malfoy took a single step towards Harry and Katie, and narrowed his eyes at the seemingly empty stretch of wall.

Quite suddenly, Harry felt a drop of sweat trickle down from his forehead, past his cheek, and, completely against his will, off his chin and onto the floor.

Now, Malfoy wasn't just suspicious. Now, he knew that something funny was going on. Something, or someone, was there that shouldn't be.

Malfoy took three more steps forward, and both Harry and Katie found themselves face-to-face with him. Literally. They could feel his breath pushing on the cloak, they could see every mole on his face, they could have even counted his eyelashes if they had wanted to.

But right now, the last thing Harry and Katie wanted to do was count Malfoy's eyelashes. They watched in utter horror as Malfoy bet down and squatted on the floor, extended his left arm, and touched the little drop of sweat on the floor with his index finger. He lifted his finger to eye level and examined it closely. He sniffed it, then looked up.

Even though he knew that he was already up against the wall, Harry tried to take a step backwards.

Now, fitting two sixteen-year-olds underneath one small invisibilty cloak without letting their feet be seen was not an easy task.

So as Harry went to step backwards, the cloak was momentarily lifted up over Harry's right foot, so that Malfoy, who was still on the floor in a squatted position, had a temporaryily clear view of Harry's foot. He could see every little detail on the shoe, the position of all the little designs, the laces, every mark of dirt- everything.

Malfoy, who was already scared and paranoid about what he was doing in the Room of Requirement, was frightened beyond imagine when he saw the single, lone foot suddenly appear on the floor, then vanish as quickly and unexpectedly as it had come.

Harry, realizing that he had just let Malfoy see his foot, hastily covered it back up again with the invisibility cloak, turned his head towards Katie.

Likewise, Katie looked at Harry, and for the second time that night, the two of them shared a look. A look that plainly said that if they were going to get out of there anytime soon, they would have to leave within the next three seconds.

After recovering from his momentary shock of seeing a foot materialize into thin air, Malfoyquickly stood up. Just as he was reaching full height, Harry and Katie had both turned and grabbed for the doorknob.

After realizing that they weren't going to be getting anywhere with both of their hands sitting motionlessly on the door handle, Harry and Katie both removed their hands- at the same time.

They looked at eachother, and Harry silently told Katie 'I'll get it'.

Harry turned the doorknow as fast and hard as he could, pulled the door open, and he and Katie sprinted through the doorway.

Not even looking back to see if Malfoy was following them, Harry and Katie ran all the way down the hallway, only stopping after turning three corners to catch their breath.

And it was then, while the two of them were standing there, looking at eachother and breathing heavily, did they realize that the invisibility cloak had fallen off and landed on the floor right in front of the door to the Room of Requirement, and they were now standing in the middle of the hallway, completely visible to passerby.

"Harry, Malfoy's going to see that cloak on the floor, and he's going to know that it was us in the Room of Requirement with him, I know it!"

"Alright, look. We're really stuck here, 'cause we can't go get the cloak now, Malfoy would see us. But if we don't get it now, he'll find it on the floor." Harry said between breaths. "I think that we should go back the the common room for a couple minutes, then go back to the Room of Requirement and get the cloak. Malfoy should be gone by then, right?" Harry asked her, though Katie could tell by the look on his face that he knew as well as she did that that wasn't going to work.

And Harry could tell by the look on Katie's face that she thought that his idea was really pretty stupid. They both knew that there was no way that Harry's idea was going to work.

Harry was going to say something else to her, when his eyes made contact with a single, dark figure at the other end of the corrior, walking in their direction.

The two of them stared at it, scared stiff and frozen on the spot.

"Please, let it be anyone but Malfoy..." Katie whispered under her breath, and Harry was thinking the same thing. They both knew that if Malfoy ever found out that if was them who had been in the Room of Requirement with him, that they had seen what he was doing, that they knew what he was up to, they would be in big trouble.

So both of them were squinting at the lone figure at the end of the hallway, hoping and praying that it wasn't Malfoy.

But once they really looked at it, Harry and Katie could tell, by the slumped way the person was walking, that it wasn't Malfoy. They both relaxed and began to breath normally again. But they still couldn't really tell who it was from this far away.

But once he (or she) had taked a few more steps in their direction, Harry and Katie could just make out a curtain of black, greasy hair, parted in the middle, and surrounding a hollow, dark face. A face that whose only emotion was distinct coldness, and a face that contained black, formidable eyes. They could tell now that it was a man, and by the way he was holding himself, the by the way he was walking, there was no doubt in either Harry's or Katie's mind that the figure was none other than Severus Snape.