Disclaimer 1: This is fanfic. That means I do not own any of it. I just borrow it to play with for a little while and let people see the pathetic results if they really want to.

Disclaimer 2: I'm not making any money from it. It's just for fun.

Disclaimer 3: What isn't borrowed is all made up. None of this is real or most likely at all realistic. Please don't trust any of the information in here. Most likely you know more about whatever I'm writing about than I do.

Disclaimer 4: Attitudes, views and opinions expressed by the characters or in the story are not necessarily those of the author. Even when writing Science Fiction or Fantasy I do not tend to attempt to create perfect/better worlds in which everybody gets a happy end ... or whatever is best for them. Please accept that some characters will have a bad ending or be unhappy.

Disclaimer 5: I intend no insult to anyone. If I offend anyone I'm very sorry. Please understand that it was an accident as I tend to be very clumsy in these things.

Notes: Even his map can't help Harry ... or can it?

Chapter 25: The Egg and the Eye

"Maybe there's a way to conjure a bathtub," Hermione said. "Or transfigure it. I'll have to look it up in the library."

"And where would you do it?" Draco asked her. "I don't know about your bathrooms, but ours don't have enough room and the prefects will forbid you to do it anywhere else, either because it's indecent or because splashing water will ruin the furniture."

"If only Percy were still here," Ron sighed. "He'd have been sure to let you use the prefects' bathroom if we'd asked him nicely."

"The prefects' bathroom has a bathtub?" Harry asked excitedly.

"I think so," Ron replied cautiously " That is I think Percy mentioned it once."

So Harry went and asked George and Frederick.

"Why yes, it does," Frederick confirmed. "A really big one, too."

"But we only got in there once," George confided. "It has a password that changes every month or so."

At first Harry was disappointed. Then he considered asking one of the prefects, but he didn't really know any of the current ones and doubted that he could convince them to break the rules for him.

On the other hand he owned an invisibility cloak and a magical map of the institute that had given him the password to get into the secret tunnel that led into Honeydukes.

So that night Harry took both as well as the egg and snuck to the prefects' bathroom, but no matter how hard he tried the map didn't seem to know the password any more than he did. Apparently its makers had known the one for the tunnel and taught it to their map. They must also have known of the bathtub then, though, because the map actually showed it to him when he asked it to zoom in on the room. Maybe just like Frederick and George they had had the password once, but it had been changed long since.

Harry sighed disappointedly and zoomed out again to check whether the way back to Gryffindor tower was clear. Apparently everybody was in bed except for ... Bartemius Crouch in Professor Snape's office?

At first Harry shrugged it off. Why shouldn't Mr. Crouch be friends with Professor Snape and visit him? There was no curfew for adults.

But if they were friends, why was Professor Snape in his bedroom while Mr. Crouch was visiting him in his office? Shouldn't they both be in his sitting room together?

That was what friends did when they visited, wasn't it? Sit in the sitting room and talk?

Besides, if what Ron had told him the morning after the Yule ball was true Mr. Crouch was too sick to work and Percy had taken over all his duties. Surely then he couldn't be well enough to visit friends either?

Harry decided to investigate. Under the invisibility cloak Mr. Crouch would never be able to see him after all, so it had to be perfectly safe.

Or so he thought until he tripped into a trick step on the stairs and dropped his egg which promptly fell open and started screaming so loudly that it woke up Mr. Filch and Professor Snape.

Harry already thought that he'd lost his unsolved clue to Mr. Filch who thought that it had been dropped there by Peeves, but then luckily Professor Moody arrived and managed to retrieve the egg and map and chase off Mr. Filch and Professor Snape even though the one was obsessed with catching Peeves and the other furious about the intruder in his office.

"That is a very nice map you've got there Harry," the Professor remarked as he freed the boy from the hole in the stairs. "Would you lend it to me for a while?"

Harry didn't like to part with his map, but he was out after curfew and Professor Moody had just rescued him. Not to mention that Harry still needed a bathtub.

"How about an exchange," he suggested. "I lend you the map and you let me use your bathtub?" He crossed his fingers hoping that Professor Moody had such a thing. "It seems that I need to open the egg in one."

The professor agreed quite readily assuring Harry once again that he was always willing to help him along so he'd survive the tournament.