Ron's thirteenth birthday fell on a Monday. Anything as involved as an outing to the Forbidden Forest was not an option, but Harry and Hermione still wanted to celebrate as much as they could manage. The day before, they took a packet of Cojure-a-Cake mix and some ready-made chocolate fudge icing to Hagrid's hut to bake a birthday cake.
Hagrid was already fussing around the fireplace when they arrived. All sorts of utensils and ingredients were laid out on his table, including a cauldron and weighing scales, as well as a heavy, black pot with a handle, that looked somewhere between a cauldron and a Dutch oven. There was, however, nothing resembling a whisk.
"Help yerselves ter what you need," said Hagrid. "The eggs are inside the cauldron – the hens laid them this morning. If only the roosters were doin' as well..."
"Are they still getting killed?" asked Hermione. They had heard Hagrid complain about this issue several times now.
Hagrid nodded his hairy head. "Just a couple of 'em left. Strange, isn it? None of the hens got killed…"
Neither Harry nor Hermione had ever cooked the magical way before, but they both knew their way around a kitchen, and with Hagrid's help and their potions lessons, they had the cake baking over the fire in no time. While waiting, Harry and Hermione's thoughts turned back to their troubles.
"If Lockhart is a fraud, someone would have noticed," Hermione was saying. "His stories are very detailed – there's place names and dates, and-"
"Maybe no one cares! Maybe people just like to read the stories-"
"You're thinkin' Lockhart's a fraud? Whatever brought that on?" Hagrid looked at his visitors shrewdly, while they fell silent.
Harry had tried to explain his encounters with Lockhart both to his friends and to Sirius. It was a rather nebulous idea, but something about the re-enactments of Lockhart's adventures had always felt fake. He had never given it much thought, until seeing Lockhart in the foe-glass, and connecting it to the latest detention Harry had had with him. Since then, every interaction he had had with the man over the year appeared to him in a different light. His friends were unsure what to think, though, and Sirius had yet to write back, after almost two weeks. He had never needed that long to reply before.
"He… doesn't seem to know what he's doing, half the – well, most of the time, really," Harry said finally.
"Won't argue with yeh over that," said Hagrid. "But he's always been that way, ever since he was a student here-"
"Oh, really?" Hermione looked interested. "You remember him from back then?"
Hagrid nodded. "Used ter be an annoying little blighter; used ter tell everyone he'd become the greatest wizard that ever lived. But, ter be fair – used ter be a Ravenclaw – he did do well, I reckon – much better'n what one would've expected."
Harry was surprised to hear this, but thinking about it, he supposed there must be a reason why people believed him. Hermione, on the other hand, looked reassured. Harry supposed she was glad her judgement had not been that far off.
"I keep forgetting that everyone in the wizarding world went to Hogwarts-" said Hermione.
"Not everyone," said Hagrid.
"Well, almost everyone, then. But that still means that the Hogwarts professors know – almost – everyone in the magical world," she said thoughtfully. "That's still quite a strange thought-"
"But then you have Binns, who didn't even know what the Chamber of Secrets was, even though it was opened fifty years ago. And he's old enough to have remembered that-" Harry stopped talking when he noticed Hagrid shifting awkwardly where he sat on his bed.
"Ah, let's see how the cake's doin'," he said while he got up and went to the fireplace, turning his back to his guests.
Hermione raised her eyebrows, looking as curious as Harry felt. "Hagrid, do you think Professor Binns didn't say anything, even though he knew about it?"
"Reckon he'd heard a thing or two," rumbled Hagrid. "Not the best idea, ter frighten children, though, is it? An' he prob'ly didn't know all that much. Professor Dippet – headmaster at that time – tried ter keep it all quiet..."
"But didn't a student die last time?" asked Hermione.
"Bin busy investigatin' again, have yeh?" Hagrid asked, not sounding too happy about it. "Cake's done. Here, let me get it outta the cauldron." He put on his enormous oven mitt, to grab the handle. Once he had put the hot cake on a plate, he finally looked at his guests. "Yeh'll need a cooling charm before you can put th' icing on. Have yeh ever done this before?"
"I have," said Hermione, but then she looked suspiciously at the utensils on the table, none of which looked like a spatula.
"If you'd like… I mean, I could..." Hagrid glanced at the pink umbrella sitting in the corner.
"Oh, no, I think I can..." Hermone picked up her wand and got to work.
Harry, who was not nearly as neat as she was, decided to leave the icing to her. He just opened the pot of ready-made icing and handed it to her. As he sat back down, his eyes were drawn to Hagrid's umbrella. He had the first glimmer of an idea – a rather outrageous idea, that
"Hagrid..." he began carefully. "How did that headmaster keep things quiet? Or why?"
"After th' attacks were over, it was easy enough..." said Hagrid.
"What? The attacks just stopped from one day to the next?" Hermione asked.
Hagrid did not reply, just sort of nodded and began busying himself around the hut.
Harry was beginning to feel terribly excited, but tried to keep himself from showing it. If his mad idea was right, a single wrong word might stop Hagrid from telling them more. He had to keep his questions nice and curious, oblivious, and with no reference to Hagrid himself. "But obviously Slytherin's monster was not found," he reasoned. That seemed a safe way to approach what he was actually itching to ask. "So why did the headmaster believe that the attacks had stopped?"
"What yer askin' – I dunno, Harry..." Hagrid grumbled a little under his breath, making Harry's heart skip a beat, but then he faced his visitors, took in their solemn, curious faces – only maintained through sheer force of will, on Harry's part – and let the Gryffindor in him win. "There was a prefect – very popular wi' the teachers – thought him rather snotty, meself. Anyway, he, er, thought he'd found the monster – an' Professor Dippet believed 'im."
"Who was that prefect?" asked Harry breathlessly, trying to keep his voice calm.
"Tom Somethin' – Can't remember. That cake's turned out rather pretty, hasn' it, Hermione?" Hagrid tried to change the topic, but was faced with a baffled Hermione.
Harry, sensing the danger, got up from his seat to reach her in time, but he was too late.
"Not Tom Riddle?" she almost squeaked.
"How – how d'yeh-"
Hermione drew in her breath, suddenly catching on to what Harry had been getting at. "Hagrid," she exclaimed, "you didn't happen to go to school around the time the Chamber was first opened, did you?"
It was astonishing how quickly Hagrid's demeanour changed. Hermione's astonished eyes sought Harry's, who looked bitterly disappointed, rather than surprised. She gaped like a fish for a moment. But Hagrid was pretending not to have heard her question, talking about how to package the cake, before he told them he had to have a look at Fang and stepped outside the hut.
"Harry, did you hear that?!" she asked urgently. "Oh, but of course! Hagrid was expelled from Hogwarts, and we never did find out what for-"
"Ugh, Hermione, he can still hear you, keep your voice down," groaned Harry. "Honestly, if you'd just waited for one minute, who knows what he might've said..." Harry trailed off at her crestfallen expression, aware that it was unfair to blame her and make her feel guilty for something that was not her fault.
It was unquestionably disappointing, however. Hermione even felt the need to apologise for not catching on early enough – or too early, however one looked at it – when she and Harry told Ron about it the next day.
"Don't worry, Hermione," Ron said generously. "Everyone makes a mistake – even you. We'll find a way to get Hagrid to talk to us."
Ron was in too good a mood on his birthday to feel discouraged. This was in part due to the presents he had received – including the birthday cake from his friends – but more so due to the lack of nasty surprises that morning. It was possible that this was a kind of birthday present from the twins. For the first time in two weeks, neither Harry nor Ron had had to deal with stray spiders in their dormitory, shampoos and soaps with odd effects – changing hair colour being the least offensive – or just plain old dungbombs. It was enough to cheer anyone up.
Harry watched Ron eat breakfast, and wondered where it fit. After all the cake he had eaten earlier, he himself was quite happy to devote his attention to the letter Hedwig had just delivered to him, but Ron was a different matter.
Finally, Sirius had replied. There was no explanation given for the long silence, and on the whole, the letter seemed rather cryptic to Harry. Besides the usual greetings, all the letter said was that Harry might want to get a hold of the next morning's Daily Prophet.
Harry and his friends were still confused by this instruction when they came down to the great hall the next morning, but knowing to look for it, they soon spotted several people engrossed in the newspaper, or tittering with their neighbours, pointing at some article in it, while also sneaking looks to the head table.
Ron marched up to his brother. "Percy, morning. Can I borrow your newspaper?" He held his hand out expectantly.
Percy, who had a subscription, was usually only too happy to spread his good influence to his younger siblings, but that morning, he hesitated, looking rather embarrassed. "I don't… I… What do you want it for, anyway?" he tried to sound suspicious.
"Someone was saying something about a funny article. Come on, I'm not going to eat it!"
"I – well, I lent it to – someone," said Percy stiffly. He looked unmistakeably flushed.
"Can I have it when you get it back, then?" Ron went back to where his friends were sitting without waiting for a reply, completely ignoring the suspicious looks his brother was shooting at his retreating back.
All through breakfast, Ron and his friends kept an eye on Percy, to ask for the Daily Prophet as soon as he got it back – before he decided to pass it on to someone else. He finished his meal quickly and excused himself from the other Gryffindor prefects seated around him. Then, instead of walking out of the great hall, he turned and walked over to the Ravenclaw table, trying his best not to attract attention.
His youngest brother and his two best friends were lying in wait for him as he stepped out of the great hall.
"If you must know, I was merely talking to Miss Clearwater this morning a–about – prefect – things, and she just happened to ask about the Daily Prophet—" Percy began to explain, growing ever more flustered.
"So, can I have it for a minute now?" said Ron, once again holding out his hand, clearly not in the least interested in his brother's meetings with Miss Clearwater.
"I – I was – I – Fine. Here it is—"
"Thanks," said Ron, and his friends huddled around him as he began to leaf through it.
Percy would later end up asking himself if he should have noticed at that point that his brother was once again up to no good, but in that moment he was too glad to have got away without being heckled about his association with Penelope Clearwater.
It was not easy to find which article Sirius was talking about. Eventually, Harry and his friends found a short article almost at the back of the paper, an odd little interview with a banshee – one of Celestina Warbeck's backup singers. They concluded this was what Sirius wanted them to read, because it contained a very interesting reference to Lockhart.
The banshee was talking about a number of uninteresting topics neither Harry nor his friends cared to read about – how she trained her voice to not be dangerous to humans when she sang, what she thought of human love songs – especially the very extravagant kind Warbeck sang and so on. But at the end of the interview, she answered a question about how her audience of humans dealt with her being a dangerous creature.
She answered rather rudely – all her answers had been rather rude, in fact – that it was not her fault humans were such fragile creatures. (Ron just went on reading, as if this was a perfectly acceptable answer, while Harry and Hermione had to take a moment to silently communicate their bewilderment.) The interviewer, instead of thinking her answer completely out of place (insane), started arguing that witches and wizards were more than a match against banshees.
The banshee disagreed, and replied that witches and wizards liked to exaggerate, and even plain lie about their fights against banshees. She ended by saying that whatever Lockhart, for example, had claimed in his book, no banshee she had ever heard of – herself included – had at any point run into him in Bandon. And she knew every banshee 'worth knowing' from there.
The interview came to an abrupt halt after that, with the journalist ending the article with dismissing the banshee's claims and making her out to be 'easily offended'. The journalist did not seem to take her claims against Lockhart at all seriously.
Harry and his friends saw things differently, of course, but they seemed to be in the minority. It may have amused a few people when reading it, but past that first morning, no one even mentioned it. No one seemed to care what that banshee had said. Well, no one other than Lockhart himself. He continued to look pale, although he tried to cover it up with even more smiles and confident words – and possibly make-up.
Lockhart was getting worse as time went on, looking drawn and peaky, because more articles started to appear in the Daily Prophet, similar to the interview with the banshee.
A fortnight or so after Ron's birthday, there was an article about some anti-werewolf legislation that had been proposed by someone called Umbridge. This was front-page news, the new hot topic discussed by the magical government.
The article Harry and his friends were poring over – in another edition of the Daily Prophet they had borrowed from an ever more suspicious Percy – was a few pages later, in the small section of the paper dedicated to the counter-arguments to the proposed legislation. It was an interview with a 'concerned member of the public', not mentioned by name. But every phrase of it made Harry's hair stand on end.
Many of the arguments were too similar to the ones Sirius had written in his letter to Harry about werewolves to be a coincidence, and a couple turns of phrase convinced him that the interviewee had been Sirius himself. There was even a reference to Lockhart, and his use of the Homorphus spell against a werewolf.
"Oh, no. What was he thinking?" said Hermione.
Harry looked about the breakfast table. Much as he wanted to get his friends' input, worried as he was himself, it would not do to be overheard. "Let's talk about it later," he said.
It turned out, that discussion had to be shelved until much later that day. First, Harry and Ron lost a point each in transfiguration, because once again they had turned up with neon green hair – courtesy of the twins.
They were not as obnoxious as they had been in the beginning, but at least a couple times a week, the younger boys still had to contend with nasty surprises. Hermione scoffed at them, before doing her best in class to win the points back – and usually succeeded. Harry was glad the twins could not go into the girls' dormitories, and everything they needed to keep secret was safe from the twins in her room, but sometimes he wished the twins would prank her as well, because she was getting hypocritically smug about never getting in trouble.
"Hermione, you do remember that all our rule-breaking this year has been your idea, don't you?" said an exasperated Ron, but Hermione ignored him, pretending to be busy taking notes.
Later, after lunch, they had defence. Lockhart made them take a quiz, which was mostly centred around his book Wanderings with Werewolves, and the questions were not at all subtle. He had obviously read the paper as well.
Neville stuck close to them after they left the classroom, nervously excited to finally be included in his friends' mysterious training. Now that it was spring, they could go outside, and they did. The boys followed Hermione as she led them a little behind the broomshed, away from too many prying eyes.
"So, Neville, the shield charm," she said. "We want to try to cast it together – you know all about that already-"
Neville nodded, because she seemed to expect him to, even though he really did not think he knew much of anything. "The shield – What, like Protego?"
"Yes. So, which jinx – or curse, if you like – is your strongest?"
Neville stammered, put so on the spot. "But isn't that really difficult to do?" His face was stuck somewhere between surprised and confused.
Hermione brushed off the concern. "Yes, Protego is a fourth year charm, but it's the sort of thing you need to work on. Casting it isn't so difficult – making the shield powerful and making it last a while are the tricky parts."
The problem with having Neville help with practicing the shield charm was that he was not very good at casting spells – especially powerful ones. He was rather intrigued by the secret duelling club, however, and none of the others had the heart to tell him he would not be able to help them. Instead, Hermione tried her best to teach him a couple of easy jinxes to the standard she required.
~HP~
"Are you sure you need my help?" asked Neville after yet another time Hermione lost her patience with him.
"Yes! You're nearly there, Neville. I'm sorry I shouted at you."
Neville did not argue any further. He raised his wand to cast another spell. Harry had to wonder at him. Over the course of the last few days, since being included in their duelling practice, Neville had been a very good sport, training with them once every few days, and even following along to odd locations that all suspiciously turned out to be empty of other people.
As April was nearing, Neville began to fuss about the upcoming Easter holidays. "What if I forget everything I learned? And what will you do? How will you pracice casting Protego all together while I'm gone?" He seemed to feel strangely guilty that he would be returning to the safety of his home, while his friends would remain at the monster-infested school.
Harry and his friends reassured him as best they could, while they, themselves, had other things to worry about. Hagrid had so far evaded all their attempts to talk about Tom Riddle. Sirius did not seem to have abandoned his investigation of Lockhart. And April Fools' Day was approaching.
The morning of April 1st the dormitory doors were locked. Harry was not the first to wake up. He was woken – like the other boys in his dorm – by Seamus trying, and failing, to leave the dormitory. His loud, indignant complaining that he could not open the door soon had the remaining four boys on their feet.
Harry and Ron had been expecting trouble from the twins, of course – if not quite as early on – and were on full alert right away. The other boys, however, were baffled by what had happened. The memory of Fred and George's pranks the year before seemed to have slipped their minds. Harry and Ron silently agreed not to remind them, as they did not want the boys' anger to be redirected at them.
While the other boys were debating what to do, Ron took Harry aside to discuss what the twins might have done to the door. Neville thought Alohomora might work, and Dean tried it, but without success.
"Nah, it won't be anything that easy. Those two would never be that nice," Ron said quietly, so that only Harry could hear.
"How about Finite Incantatem?" asked Harry just as quietly.
"Worth a try. They won't expect us to be able to cast it. I'll distract them so you can try." He nodded towards their dorm mates.
The general counter-spell did indeed work, leaving Harry to stutter through a contrived explanation as his dorm mates regarded him suspiciously, and Ron tried his best not to draw their attention to himself.
Once they had escaped their dormitory, they noticed the suspiciously empty staircase, and sure enough, angry banging and shouting could be heard from the other dorm rooms as well. It turned out, rather than being satisfied with just pranking their little brother and his friend, Fred and George had decided to lock every dorm room in the Gryffindor tower.
Resignedly, Harry and Ron went to all the dormitories to help. The younger years were easy, either Alohomora or Finite Incantatem was enough to release the locked-in students. The older years were more challenging, until Ron realised that the twins had not always used magic to lock the doors.
"Ugh. All that opening doors with hairpins – of course they learned it for something like this..." He shook his head.
Percy was almost apoplectic with rage, by the time they freed him, having correctly guessed the culprits, though not how to get around their prank. Oliver Wood was only slightly less angry, and that only because he managed to open the door himself, using brute force.
Once they reached the common room, Harry and Ron discovered that the girls had not fared any better. It was unclear how the twins had managed to reached their dormitories, but all their doors had been locked as well. Hermione told them how she had managed to free herself with the general counter-spell, as well, but she had been unable to help the older students. It was Angelina Johnson and Katie Bell, who had figured out that their door was locked the muggle way – they knew the twins quite well, it seemed – and had then helped the other girls.
Disgruntled, late, hungry, and quite mad at Fred and George – their absence had finally clued in everyone at what had happened – the Gryffindor students finally arrived in the great hall – only to find that they were the first students there, much to the bafflement of the professors.
Snape got up to go to the Slytherin dormitories as soon as he heard the Gryffindors' tale. Sprout hesitated a little, but then followed suit. Flitwick, on the other hand, poured himself more pumpkin juice.
"Let the Ravenclaws work it out on their own," he said unconcernedly to a mildly disapproving McGonagall. "It'll be a good exercise in problem-solving."
And as it happened, the Ravenclaw students arrived before the other two houses. They started to trickle in slowly, excitedly discussing the reason for their late arrival: Apparently, someone had sent the Bloody Baron a Valentine, delivered by Moaning Myrtle – who swore up and down it had been from the Grey Lady – asking for a 'date' in the Ravenclaw tower that morning. The Ravenclaw house ghost did not seem to get along with the Bloody Baron, though, and had a bit of an angry fit when he had turned up. The students had been too interested in solving the mystery – and calming their house ghost, who had been flinging furniture through the air – to remember the time.
The Slytherins were the next to turn up. Snape looked livid as he marched back into the great hall with his students in tow. They looked somewhat worse for wear, their robes stained and pulled out of shape. It turned out, someone had tipped off Peeves that the Bloody Baron would be away that morning.
It was already quite late in the morning, and it looked like the first class of the day would need to be cancelled, when the Hufflepuffs finally turned up. Many of them looked red in the face, and some looked positively humiliated, while Sprout kept reassuring the younger ones. They were the least forthcoming about the reason for their tardiness, but finally – when questioned by Dumbledore directly – they admitted that the house elves had kept them from leaving, convinced that they were badly traumatised by the attacks happening at Hogwarts that year, and needed to be served breakfast in bed.
"There are house elves at Hogwarts?" asked Hermione, but the boys ignored her question. They were too busy laughing.
Fred and George could not be found until lunch time, though of course people tried. Some even missed a class to look for them, but to no avail. They then casually walked into the great hall, once everyone had begun to eat lunch, shouting, "April fools!" and bowed theatrically as chaos began to erupt at their appearance.
Dumbledore had to demand silence several times before he could speak. "Put down your wands, please! You may not throw food, or cutlery, at your fellow students! Everybody, please be seated!" Once a tense, angry silence had been established, he directed his attention to the twins. "Now that it is after midday, I suppose the jokes are over?"
"Of course, headmaster."
"We wouldn't want to be the fools, would we?" came the cheeky replies. The twins would not stop grinning.
Harry had to wonder where they had learned about that part of the tradition, as he could not remember telling them the year before. But then, he would not have expected Dumbledore to be that well-informed either.
"Naturally. Well, happy birthday, boys—" Dumbledore was interrupted by enthusiastic thank-yous. "Now, then. We did agree last year to celebrate April Fools' Day—" This announcement was followed by a myriad of displeased voices, booing sounds and groans, as well as shouting. "However," the headmaster raised his voice to be heard, "the celebration was not meant to include time off from lessons. As your – albeit impressive – pranks led to the first lesson being cancelled today, I'll have to take off 10 points each from your house. But I think we can do without a detention – seeing as today is your birthday."
This dimmed Harry's amusement somewhat. The students from the other houses felt the twins had not been punished nearly severely enough, and were angered by the fact that Dumbledore had more or less forbidden them to retaliate. The other professors looked displeased as well. All in all, the only ones who were satisfied with the outcome were Fred and George, who did not much care for house points.
The day wore on. The twins disappeared quickly after lunch – probably to avoid tempting anyone to retaliate after all. After their classes, Harry and his friends met up with Neville again to practice their shield charms. After Neville had left, they had another round of practice duels. Hermione managed to make her shield last through a couple of Harry's attacks, but then he quickly dived under her stream of Tarantallegra and broke her shield with a Petrificus Totalus.
"Aaand the winner is Harry! Again," said Ron, as he walked over to revive Hermione. "And what a spell to use at a time like this."
"Git," said Harry. The last thing he wanted was to see one of his friends actually petrified.
With one thing and another, their day had been rather long, so it was close to curfew when they made their way back towards the Gryffindor Tower, only to discover that the Fat Lady was not inside her portrait, and a couple students were already waiting for her. Too lazy to wait, they went to the library for a bit, as Hermione wanted to finish her history homework. When they returned, it was almost curfew, the students who had been waiting were not there any longer, but neither was the Fat Lady.
They waited in the empty corridor, feeling rather silly, until they heard footsteps and checked their map to find Filch was coming their way. With the help of their map – and without Mrs Norris sniffing them out – it was easy to evade him, but the Fat Lady was still absent when they returned.
"Let's ask the other portraits where she's gone," said Hermione.
The boys followed her, and let the portraits send them on a wild-goose chase. Wherever they turned up, they were told that the Fat Lady had just departed from.
"This smells foul," Ron finally said. "Foul… and familiar."
He was right. As they checked their map, they noticed that the twins were very close to where the Fat Lady was supposed to be, but left before Harry, Ron and Hermione had made it there.
Ron began to swear, but then he fell silent and finally smirked. "They don't know we have another map of our own."
"And we want to keep it that way," cautioned Hermione.
"They'd never guess that," Harry waved away her concern.
With the help of their map, it was easy to chase down the twins, who tried their best to hide from them – they were obviously checking the Marauders' Map themselves – but Harry and his friends finally caught up with them.
"What happened to pranks ending at noon?" asked Ron directly.
"This wasn't a prank. It's a birthday present we gave to each other," said George.
"And you surprise us yet again," said Fred at the same time. "How did you find us so quickly?"
"Never you mind that," said Hermione. "How did you get the Fat Lady to follow your mad directions?"
"If you're not talking, then neither are we."
"Fine," said Harry. "Keep your secrets, but let us back into the Gryffindor Tower, before someone finds us—"
"Now, now, Harry. We know that you know that it's not easy to find us, if we don't want to be found. That parchment we told you we had lost—"
"Fred!" his twin brother nudged him.
"Fine. Let's not discuss any of our secrets. Let's just say that we felt we had to let you feel some of our pranking prowess. Just so you don't get the idea that we have lost our touch—"
"Yeah, yeah, we get it. You're better than us. Can we, please, now get back into the Gryffindor Tower?" said Ron.
"Patience, little brother. This lesson was deserved and all three of you know it. But this was the finale. We want to have a truce from now on—"
"And to show our goodwill, we'll tell you what we found out about Ginny's diary – as promised."
The twins paused dramatically, but they need not have bothered. The three younger adolescents had gone perfectly still, looking at them with wide, attentive eyes.
"Can't say I'm not curious," muttered Fred, but then shook his head. "We did promise, though..."
"Yes, we did. Some of the Ravenclaws spotted Ginny's diary – or we think it was her diary, from their description. Anyway, they spotted it on the Hogwarts Express—"
"When was that?" said Harry.
"Christmas holidays, of course-" George went on.
"But, on the trip to London, if that matters-" added Fred. As his younger brother and his friends did some silent communicating at the news, Fred tried to do the same with George. Those three were definitely up to no good.
"Where exactly was it? Or, rather, who had it?" asked Hermione.
"Yeah, that's the thing… They saw it fly out of a compartment when the train turned, and a rat ran after it – I know this sounds a bit ridiculous-" George stopped talking, because Ron and his friends did not look at all like they thought the story sounded far-fetched. They looked rather alarmed, actually.
"That's all we have, I'm afraid. But, if at any point you decide to let us know what this is all about-"
"Never you mind that," said Ron at once. He and his friends looked eager to leave all of a sudden. Probably to discuss their secrets alone.
"Er, thanks for telling us. That's definitely, er, truce-worthy..." Harry said before they made their way back to the Gryffindor Tower.
"If Pettigrew took the diary away from Hogwarts, maybe the attacks really are over," Ron suggested tentatively once they were finally in their dorm, surrounded by their sleeping dorm mates.
Harry had to concede that it was a tempting thought. It would save them a very uncomfortable chat with Hagrid, for one, so they could return to their friendly weekly visits without him trying to avoid talking to them – or meeting them altogether, as he had been doing recently. And yet. The anxious feeling that he was missing something would not let go of him.