Chapter Seventy-Eight - The Egg and the Eye
Draco was holding court on his side of the dormitory. Crabbe and Goyle sat lazily on the floor, playing a game of gobstones while Draco lounged above them on his bed. He held another copy of the Prophet in his hands, and amused himself with reading passages from Skeeter's latest article aloud. Crabbe and Goyle had clearly heard the same jokes several times before, and they could barely muster the chuckles that Draco was seeking. They knew the performance was merely to get under Harry's skin. But Draco was destined to be disappointed. Harry had other things on his mind.
Harry looked at Blaise and gave him a nod. Blaise, attending to the signal, sat up on his bed and called across the dorm.
"Say, Draco? Have you seen my snake?"
Draco paused in the middle of another recitation from the article, though his eyes did not leave the newspaper page.
"I swear, Zabini," he said slowly, "If I look up and you've got your trousers down again…"
Blaise scoffed and replied, "No, I mean Oroboros."
"I haven't seen your stupid python anywhere. Why?"
"Well, she's been going through a bit of a hugging phase. Means well, but it can get a little hard to breathe. Last I saw her she was crawling under your bed."
Draco jumped up, throwing his paper to the ground in the process.
"You mean you lost it!" he yelped, standing on his bed and looking wildly around the floor.
Crabbe and Goyle abandoned their game to scramble away from the edge of Draco's bed while Draco continued to scream at Blaise. Harry used the chaos to grab the golden egg and his invisibility cloak, then he slipped unobtrusively out the door.
The common room was quiet and dark. Harry had decided to wait until nightfall before launching his plan of sneaking into the prefect's bathroom. He couldn't risk getting caught during the day, but under the cloak, he could easily move through the school at night. The only obstacle was sneaking out of the dormitory without Draco asking nosy questions, but Blaise had that covered. At the moment, Oroboros was comfortably curled in Blaise's trunk, but Blaise would no doubt have their roommates searching for her for hours. Patting his pocket to make sure the Marauder's Map was in place, Harry slipped under the cloak and out the common room entrance.
The moonlit corridors were empty and silent as Harry made his way out of the dungeons and up the stairs to the fifth floor. He was glad that he met with no hindrances on the way, as the egg was awkward and heavy, tucked under one arm. He studied the map at intervals, but no one was near. The miniscule dot labelled Argus Filch was stalking through the third floor trophy room, his cat by his side. All else was clear.
Reaching the statue of Boris the Bewildered, Harry found the correct door and muttered "pine fresh" as Cedric had instructed. The door opened with a faint creak that put Harry's nerves on edge. He quickly passed through the opening and closed the door as carefully as possible, bolting it behind him.
Harry had never considered becoming a prefect before, but now the possibility was tempting. The bathroom was glorious. As soon as he entered the room, dozens of candles on a magnificent chandelier flickered to life, illuminating the space with a soft, golden light. Everything had been carved from white marble, from the floors and columned walls to the sinks and rows of toilets behind their gilded partitions. What appeared to be a large swimming pool was sunk in the middle of the floor, a hundred golden taps circling its perimeter. Harry assumed this was in fact the bath that Cedric had mentioned.
Harry approached the edge of the bath, noting the long white curtains that were draped over the windows. On the opposite wall, a single gold-framed painting depicted a pretty blonde mermaid sleeping on a rock. Her hair flickered over her face each time she snored.
Harry smiled. She looked very different from the merpeople he was used to seeing swim past the windows of the common room. He supposed that somewhere in the world there must be merpeople who looked like the painting. Perhaps somewhere warm and sunny, but certainly not in the Black Lake.
He set to work. Cedric had told him to take the egg into the bath, and that was exactly what Harry was going to do. He turned on several taps, experimenting with the different perfumed waters and bubble varieties, then he grabbed one of the fluffy white towels from a nearby shelf and set the egg on it at the very edge of the pool.
The colossal tub was filled in a much shorter time than he expected, given its dimensions. There was soon enough water for Harry to submerge himself. He shut off the taps, stripped down, and climbed in.
The water was comfortably warm and steamy. Harry played around for a bit, enjoying the sensation of floating and even swimming a bit back and forth. He didn't dare open the egg. Its screeching could alert someone to his presence, and he didn't want to be found out before he'd worked out the clue. Harry could just imagine the cries echoing off the marble walls, just as they had when he tried opening the egg in the Chamber of Secrets…
This gave Harry an idea. He had tried opening the egg underground and under the sky, but what about underwater? This would certainly explain Cedric's clue, and at the very least, the water might dampen the sound of the egg's screeching. He had tried everything else, so with a deep breath, Harry grabbed the egg, plunged it beneath the surface of the water, and opened it.
Voices… And they were singing! Harry could hear them bubbling up from the water. Delighted with his discovery, Harry dunked his head beneath the ripples and heard the last bars of the song.
… the prospect's black, too late it's gone, it won't come back…
He shut the egg. Resurfacing above the water, Harry took a deep breath, then dived down again. This time, he opened the egg when he was ready.
Come seek us where our voices sound,
We cannot speak above the ground,
And while you're searching, ponder this:
We've taken what you'll sorely miss,
An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took,
But past an hour - the prospect's black,
Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.
Harry frowned as he came up for air. We cannot speak above the ground? What did that mean? He brought the golden egg, tightly closed, above the water and considered it. The egg had to be opened underwater. That must be part of the riddle itself. Come seek us where our voices sound… Did that mean he would be facing underwater creatures for the next challenge?
Harry glanced up, and his eyes fell on the portrait of the sleeping mermaid once more. Aloud, he said to himself, "Oh, right. I'm an idiot."
There were merpeople in the Black Lake. So that was one part of the riddle solved. But what did the next part mean? Recover what we took... As far as Harry knew, he wasn't missing anything. What were the merpeople planning to take from him? And with him on shore and they in the water, how did they plan on getting it?
It then occurred to Harry that he had bigger problems at hand. The time limit was an issue. He wasn't a strong swimmer to begin with, and how was he supposed to hold his breath for an hour? Something told him the summoning charm would not work for two different challenges, particularly if he didn't know what it was the merpeople had taken.
These were questions that would have to wait. He would have better luck brainstorming with Blaise and Millie in the morning. For now, he needed to get back to his dorm. Drying off, he pulled his cloak back over his head, then checked the Marauder's Map before slipping into the corridor again.
Filch and Mrs. Norris had moved into the caretaker's office and were safely tucked away. Peeves, the school poltergeist, was now bouncing around the trophy room, no doubt wrecking whatever Filch had been setting to rights in there. Harry continued down to the dungeons, checking the map at every corner just to be sure he didn't run into any teachers on nightly patrol.
He was nearly back to the safety of the common room when he noticed something odd. The Marauder's Map showed someone moving about Snape's office - someone who wasn't Snape. The dot was labelled "Bartemius Crouch."
Harry wasn't sure what to think. He'd thought that Crouch was too ill to come to work. Isn't that what Bagman said? Wasn't that why he'd missed the Yule Ball? And what was he doing in the castle in the middle of the night, still days away from the second task?
He hesitated only a moment longer before his curiosity won out. Snape's office was located in the dungeons, not too far from the common room. It wouldn't be too out of the way. Harry could just pop by and see what was going on…
Lodging the egg more firmly under his harm, Harry hurried along the hall as fast as he could. He was so focused on checking the sound of his footfalls as he ran that he forgot to consult the map before his turns, and he nearly ran into Snape.
Harry fell back toward the wall, nearly letting the egg slip from his grasp. He managed to catch it in time, but Snape must have heard the rustle of his pajamas, or an involuntary gasp of breath. Harry covered his mouth with his free hand to muffle the sound of his panting breath as Snape stopped and turned around. His dark eyes searched the hallway with suspicion, probing into the dark corners and even passing directly over the place where Harry stood.
For a moment, Harry feared that he had been detected, but then Snape suddenly turned away from him, wordlessly lighting the tip of his wand in the same movement. The faint white glare illuminated the thin face of Igor Karkaroff.
Snape seemed just as surprised to see him as Harry was himself.
"Igor!" he rasped out, anger blending with shock, "What are you doing here?"
Karkaroff lifted his hands in supplication, as if begging Snape not to hex him in that desolate hallway. His expression was contrite, but his voice was determined as he replied, "I needed to speak to you. We never finished our conversation during the Yule Ball."
"I had not thought there was any more to discuss," Snape said coldly.
Karkaroff's blue eyes seemed to glitter in the light from Snape's wand, still pointed at his long, thin nose. "I thought that might be the case," he said, "You have been avoiding me, Severus. And I thought you would be looking for allies with the mark growing darker every day…"
"Be silent!" Snape demanded. He looked around them nervously, then leaned closer toward Karkaroff before saying in a low voice, "Perhaps you are unaware, having not been educated in Hogwarts like myself, but these walls have ears…"
"And eyes," called a gruff voice from further down the hall.
It was Professor Moody. With several heavy clunks of his wooden leg, he made his way down the corridor toward the two men and Harry.
Harry, after recovering from his own momentary surprise, turned back to see the reactions of the others. Karkaroff looked murderous, while Snape's face had grown paler than it was before. Harry sympathized with him, because as he looked back toward Moody, he saw that the professor's magical eye had swiveled in his direction and was fixed directly on him. Harry's heart was beating against his ribs with such force he was certain the professor could hear it too.
His eye could see through invisibility cloaks!
Snape must have noticed the uncanny way the ever-moving eye suddenly came to a full stop, because he started to turn his head in Harry's direction. But then Moody grunted and smacked the side of his own head. The eye began to swivel around once more.
"Sorry about that," Moody said, "Damn thing sticks from time to time. Now to business… What brings you gentlemen to this corridor in the middle of the night?"
"I thought I heard a disturbance coming from my office," Snape replied. In spite of his pallor, his face was calm. Harry wondered if he was telling the truth, or if he had recovered from his shock to deliver a well-formed lie, "I was on my way to investigate when I ran into Karkaroff."
"A disturbance in your office, Snape?" Moody repeated, "That could be serious. Shall we go have a look?"
"That will not be necessary," replied Snape with a slight grimace.
"Not hiding anything in there, are you?" Moody pressed further.
Snape's face changed color again, this time from white to red, as he replied, "Nothing but potion ingredients, as you well know, having searched it yourself."
"Auror's privilege," Moody said with a lopsided grin, "You know Dumbledore asked me here to keep an eye on…"
"Dumbledore trusts me," Snape interrupted, his eyes flickering to Karkaroff for just a moment.
"Sure he does," Moody grumbled, then he turned his gaze to Karkaroff again.
Karkaroff had lost the murderous look, his face was now set in a mask of haughty disdain.
"What about you, Karkaroff?" Moody asked, "I find it strange that you would be in the castle so late at night. Know anything about this disturbance Snape heard in his office?"
"Dumbledore may consent to have his teachers treated like criminals," Karkaroff spat resentfully, "But I do not have to abide by the same standard."
He began to march away without another word, his steps leading him toward the stairs. Presumably, he was headed back to his ship. Snape also muttered something about taking his leave, though he turned and followed the corridor down to his office. Moody alone remained in the hall several minutes after, his magical eye tracing the progress that Karkaroff made up the staircase, while his natural eye remained fixed on Snape until he was lost around a turn. It was only then, when he was completely alone, that he addressed Harry.
"So, Potter. Taking a page out of your father's book, I see?"
There was no use hiding now. Harry removed his cloak and asked, "Why didn't you tell the others I was here?"
"Don't worry. I'm on the lookout for dark wizards, not students breaking curfew," Moody said with a chuckle, "But what were you doing there? You're not the one who broke into Snape's office, are you?"
"No! But I think I saw the person who did," Harry explained, "I was working out the clue to my egg… for the second task, you know? But then I noticed something strange on the map…"
"What Map?" asked Moody.
Harry hadn't meant to let that detail slip, and he wished now that he hadn't said anything. But Remus had told him that he could trust Moody. He supposed it would be fine to show him the Marauder's Map. Harry handed him the parchment, still displaying the detailed diagram of the school. Moody was impressed.
"This must be Remus's work," he declared instantly.
"How did you know?"
"You got this off of someone, and it's not the sort of thing you can buy in a store," Moody said, "And Sirius isn't clever enough. Magic this delicate had to have been done by Remus."
Harry couldn't help but smile. He knew that if Sirius were there, he would have agreed with Moody whole-heartedly.
"So what was it you saw on this map?" Moody continued.
"I saw Mr. Crouch moving around Snape's office," Harry said, "That must have been the disturbance Snape was talking about."
"Crouch?" Moody repeated. He looked at the map again and shook his head, "If he was here, he's gone now."
"I know I saw him," Harry insisted, "But he's supposed to be home sick. Mr. Bagman said he's been sending instructions to his department by owl. If he's too ill to come to work, what was he doing in the castle?"
"Interesting questions, Potter. But I am afraid I don't have the answers. Are you sure it was Crouch that you saw?"
"You can see for yourself how everyone is labelled. The name I read was Bartimeus Crouch. Who else could it refer to?"
For a moment, Moody became very still. He looked down at the map again, apparently in deep thought, before he whispered, "No... No, that's not possible…"
Harry wondered what he meant. He might have asked the professor to explain himself, but Moody abruptly asked if he could borrow the map.
"It could be useful," he explained, "You know Dumbledore asked me here for a reason, and I think it has something to do with your participation in this tournament."
Harry was fond of the map, but Moody had just covered for him. And more than that, he was a friend of Harry's godfather. Harry nodded his head in agreement, and Moody thanked him with promises that it would be returned in perfect condition. He just wanted to check a few things first.
Moody walked with Harry back along the corridor to the hidden entrance of the Slytherin common room. Harry was not surprised when Moody seemed to know exactly where to stop. Harry remembered then that he didn't tell Moody how to clear the map from other prying eyes. He asked to see the parchment again, and pointed his wand at the surface.
"Mischief Managed," Harry said, and the ink faded away instantly. "Then, when you're ready to check it again, you say I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
The lopsided grin returned to Moody's face and he said, "That'll be your father's idea."
Harry looked at him, expecting to hear more. Moody continued to look thoughtful for a moment, then commented, "James always had a knack for getting into trouble. But he was a skilled wizard and one of the bravest men I ever met. Might have made a good Auror, if not for…"
He trailed off, not finishing the thought, before he added, "I suppose you know you look like him? You have your mother's eyes, but the rest of you… I was surprised to hear you weren't sorted into his house."
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
Moody smirked at this and said, "I suppose you do. Others might think less of you for not being a Gryffindor like your parents, but not me. I was in Slytherin myself."
"You were?" Harry asked in surprise. It made sense that Moody must have gone to Hogwarts, but Harry was having a hard time picturing the old, heavily scarred man in front of him as a school boy waiting to be sorted.
"Ambition, cunning, resourcefulness… You need all three to make a decent Auror. To think the way a dark wizard thinks," Moody said with a touch of pride, "Incidentally, have you given any thought about what you would like to do after school, Potter?"
Harry was startled by the unexpected question. His mind raced to delusions of a professional Quidditch career, but he thought this would sound childish to the professor. Instead, he stated that he hadn't really given it much thought. He was only a fourth year, after all, and the tournament filled most of his thoughts these days.
"Well, you might consider a career as an Auror, yourself," said Moody, "Plenty of opportunity to go sleuthing around in that field."
He then ordered Harry off to bed while he remained outside, presumably to ensure that Harry stayed put this time. Harry returned to his dormitory, the professor's comments echoing in his head. Blaise and the others had already gone to sleep, though Draco was muttering something about snakes as he dreamt. Harry lied down in his own bed and continued to think. Auror seemed like it would be an interesting job, but Harry wasn't sure he danced a wooden leg and magical eye.