By the time Harry and I finished our little flying escapade, the Slytherins were already crowding onto the field, and we had to do a bit of fancy maneuvering to stay out of sight. We had to hide the school broom I had been using in some bushes by the castle doors, promising that we would return it to the equipment shed sometime in the next few days.
I was still wide-eyed and breathless from my flying experience, and therefore wasn't very observant as we entered the Great Hall, where lunch was already well underway. After sitting on Ron, apologizing very stupidly, then sitting down beside him in the empty chair I had been aiming for in the first place, I stared blankly at the table, grinning. I couldn't get rid of the feeling of cool air rushing past my face, making me squint my eyes, of seeing the ground far below me, hearing nothing but wind in my ears as I soared high abo-
"Hello?" Hermione jabbed me in the elbow, for what I realized was the third time. "Would you please inform Ron that he can't hog the pumpkin juice all to himself, and that others at the table may like some?"
"Would you please inform Hermione that I was just pouring myself a cup, and that if she wanted the stupid juice she could've just said so?"
"Would you please inform Ron that he needn't be so rude, and he's already had three glasses of pumpkin juice and he'll bloat like a water balloon if he drinks any more?"
"Would you please inform Hermione that we on the Quidditch team have to keep up our strength?" Now both Ron and Hermione were leaning across me to glare at each other, face to face, and they were getting louder and louder with each sentence.
"Would you please inform Ron that I AM on the Quidditch team?"
"Would you please inform Hermione that 'backup Chaser' can not remotely compare to Beater?"
"Would you please inform-" Hermione stopped as I banged my fist hard on the table and stood up.
"Inform yourselves," I said, "that I am not going to get in the middle of your little spat. I am in too good of a mood to have the two of you ruin it, no matter how much you like each other." I stressed the word 'like' in a way that made both Hermione and Ron start to protest, blushing furiously. Of course, I'm a devoted H/H worshipper myself, but I knew teenage guys and gals well enough to know what will get them to shut up. I had just convinced the two of them that the more they argued, the more people thought they liked each other, which would effectively keep them quiet for the rest of the month at least.
I reached over the table to quickly snag a crusty white roll, and walked away chewing, while Hermione and Ron sat back down and tried to concentrate on their plates, not speaking to or looking at each other.
Somehow Harry and I became friends that day. I remembered a line from book one, "There are some things you just can't share without ending up friends, and defeating a twelve-foot troll is one of them." I guess flying for the first time is another one.
But it was a shaky, not-quite-sure friendship. He still didn't completely understand me. I, of course, still thought he was a weak and shallow character, who went with the flow instead of shaping his circumstances. But he was a nice guy.
It was only when I was alone, usually in bed at night, that I could stop thinking of all of them as real people, and again think of them as the names that had become so popular.
After all, almost no fanfic writers actually thought of them as real people when they started writing. Usually fanfiction was just another way to get either you or the female character you wished you could be into a romantic relationship with Harry, Ron, Draco or Percy. (Yes, I've seen it done.)
Would I ever be able to write again, I found myself wondering one night as I stared at the dark ceiling, knowing that Harry, Ron and Hermione were no longer just names, but were actual people? It would be like writing about one of my own best friends.
It WOULD be writing about one of my own best friends, I realized a moment later. Harry was now a friend. I shuddered as I thought of my "original" characters that I had forced him to be with. I couldn't imagine him liking any of my characters, much less kissing them or risking his life for them.
And with the depressing thought that I'd failed as an author, I went to sleep.
History of Magic class was as uninteresting as ever the following Monday. However, we did get an interesting homework assignment.
At least, Hermione and I thought it was interesting. Almost everyone else thought it was just a lot of work.
"As you know," Professor Binns said near the end of class, "the Hogwarts library keeps careful records of who checks out which book when. These records have been kept ever since Hogwarts was founded."
I had already chewed my nails down to the quick, and was ready to just give up trying to stay awake and zonk out on the table like Neville, who was sitting beside me, when I saw that Hermione was watching Binns with a gleam in her eye. I tuned him back in just in time in time to hear the homework assignment.
"I want you all to go to the library this afternoon and check out the dates in the front of the books. Perhaps you might find a book that was checked out by Godric Gryffindor himself, although that's not very likely," he said. He wasn't watching us; he almost never did, after all, but instead wrote incomprehensible notes on the blackboard or stared at a pile of books and papers on his desk.
That afternoon, the library was crowded with fifth year students, all opening the covers of the books, scanning the list of names and dates inside, then either rushing them to Madame Pomfrey's desk or shoving them back on the shelf dejectedly.
The library was big enough to get lost in, and so Harry, Ron, Hermione and I all had a bookcase to ourselves to search.
"Look, here's one checked out a hundred years ago, see?" Hermione was showing him. "Jezebel Jenkins, 1896."
"This one's almost eighty," Ron said, holding out a large book with a dusty red cover.
I was holding a very dusty book too, but I wasn't scanning the long list of names and dates in the front. Instead, I was peering over the top at a group of Slytherins nearby the Restricted section. Draco Malfoy was with them, and he was laughing. I noticed that even when he was with his friends he seemed to have more of a smirk than a smile, and that his laughter was still full of scorn.
"Hey, look!" Harry was holding a book, "A Wizard's Guide To Ancient Egypt", and staring at it with wide eyes. "This one was checked out by my dad!"
I turned away from my Draco-watching to peer over Harry's right shoulder. Ron and Hermione jostled each other for his left.
Yep, there it was: James Potter, February 21, 1978. I shrugged, and turned away to keep looking, but Harry was holding the book as if it was the Holy Grail.
"My dad read this," he said softly, and something in his tone made me turn back to look at him. His eyes were still wide, his glasses had slid so far down his nose they were about to fall off, but he didn't care. Hermione squeezed his shoulder with a gentle hand, and he looked away and smiled at her, then replaced the book on the shelf.
Ass I turned back to shelves, I heard Ron's exclamation.
"Hey, you'll never guess who checked this one out!"
I turned, and saw he was holding a book called "Secrets of the Founders." He was goggling at the front page.
"Who? My dad?" Harry dropped the book he had just pulled out and turned to look over Ron's shoulder. His jaw dropped. "Oh."
That was all it took to get me interested as well. I stood on my tiptoes to look over Ron's head, and froze. Hermione must have looked to, because she said, "Oh my."
Tom Riddle, May 2, 1953.
I whistled in appreciation of the find. "Voldemort, huh?"
They all stared at me for a moment. "So, you know that Voldemort's other name was-" Harry started to say, then cut himself off. "Never mind, I already know the answer."
"I'm definitely keeping this one," Ron said, starting to grin. "Anything Voldemort was interested in has to be pretty evil. And this is about the secrets of the Founders, so…" He gave Hermione a nasty grin. "Wonder what kind of secrets they were?"
"Oh, hush up, Ron." Hermione gave a long-suffering sigh. "You have such a dirty mind."
"What? Did I say anything like that?" He put on his most innocent look. "Did I?" He turned to me and Harry, supposedly for support. Harry shook his head, smiling, as Ron turned back to the book.
"Uh-oh, this is pretty old, the pages are coming out," Ron said a moment later. Then, "Wait a minute, this isn't a page! Look!" Indeed, he was holding in his hand a piece of paper, thicker and more yellowed than the pages of the book.
"It looks like a map or something," Ron said as once again the three of us crowded around him.
"It is!" Hermione snatched it from Ron, and stared at it for a moment. "But it doesn't make any sense."
Harry gently tugged it from Hermione's hands and stared down at it. "It can't be a map, it's too disorganized." He held it out to me, but I shook my head.
"No thanks, I'm no good at figuring this kind of thing out."
I swear, my brain had disappeared for a moment. It must have been the staring at Draco that did it, because I wasn't thinking at all.
"Figuring what kind of thing out?" Hermione asked.
"Plot twists and stuff like that," I explained, turning back to the bookshelves. "I mean, like in the first book, I actually thought it was Snape, and I never even expected a plot twist. And I didn't catch any of the clues in the next few books, either. I'm no good at that kind of thing." I pulled out a rather small book that was falling apart, and flipped open the cover expertly. "Hey look, this one's over 200 years-" I turned back to the three, to find that they were giving me looks ranging between friendly bewilderment and angry suspicion.
"What," Hermione asked almost conversationally, "do you mean by 'in the first book?'"
I stopped breathing for a moment as I realized exactly what I'd just said.
"I didn't say that."
"Yes, you did."
"No, I didn't," I protested, trying to come up with a way to recover. How could I have said something so abysmally stupid?
"And," Ron cut in, "you also mentioned other books. What books are you talking about?"
"No books, nothing," I said quickly, wishing that they would just leave it alone. I didn't mean to say that, I didn't mean to say that, please, PLEASE let me not really have said that.
"Might this have something to do with where you're from, and how you know everything about us?" Harry, I thought you were on MY side! But he was staring at me now with the same intensity of the other two. I took a deep breath, forcing down the urge to just turn and run, and instead deciding to try and reason with them.
"Look, I'm sorry I said that. I can't explain it, or I would, really," I tried to say.
"Why can't you explain it?" If he had been angry, I could have burst into tears or run away, but Harry was as cool and calm as he usually was.
"Because you wouldn't believe me!"
Now Ron was angry. "You don't know that! We might believe you, whatever this earth-shattering secret is, we might believe it! You don't know that we wouldn't!" He crossed his arms. "Then again, you know everything, don't you." Harry had used almost the same phrase on me only a few days ago, and it had sounded so friendly then. Why was it now so different?
"Look, you just have to trust me!"
"But we don't trust you. I can't trust someone who keeps secrets, and tries to lie to me," Hermione said. Oh no, oh no, oh no, I can't have them fight with me! Things were going so well!
The plot had just thickened, and now my characters- and in that flash of anger they WERE *my* characters, not real people- were trying to kick me out of the story! How dare they!
"Just leave me alone, Hermione. You have to trust me. You don't have any other choice."
Something in my tone must have repelled the other girl, because she stepped back a bit, looking- not angry, really, but hurt. Ron was angry, no doubt about it. And Harry-
Oh god. Harry was staring at me in a way that there was no name for. I felt like it was only the strength of that gaze keeping me on my feet, and yet it hurt. Oh, just having him look at me hurt. But what he said hurt even worse.
"I don't know what this big secret is, or why you can't tell us. Maybe there is something so big, so incomprehensible, that we wouldn't believe you if you told us." He took a breath. "But I trust Hermione and Ron implicitly. They're my friends, and a big part of that is that we can trust each other. But if you can't trust us enough to tell us something that's obviously important, then we can't trust you."
He didn't have to say the obvious: If we can't trust you, we can't be friends.
"You wouldn't do that to me," I said, trying to relate this person staring at me to the one who fulfilled my dreams and took me flying just days ago. "You, of all people, wouldn't do that to me."
He turned away.
I was stunned. What happened to the good, kind, chivalrous Harry Potter, hero of heroes and king of the nice guys? Inhuman, immortal star of the best selling books ever?
He was turning his back on me?
"Are you telling me," I kept my tone as even and calm as his had been, even though I felt like screaming, "that the only reason you've been nice to me is to try to find out how I know all this stuff about you?"
The hesitation as he walked away, the pause before he took the next step, made me realize that no, he had been nice because he liked me. But I knew the question had hurt his pride, somewhere.
"You deceitful, horrible person," I whispered, not believing what I was saying but wanting to hurt him badly for turning his back on me. "No wonder you were almost in Slytherin. It's where you belong."
He stopped, and I almost thought he would turn around, either to yell at me or to protest my accusations. But he just stood there, with Ron and Hermione staring between the two of us. I turned my back on all three of them.
It was several moments later that I realized I was standing alone. They had left, probably to discuss the map or whatever that Ron had found, to start their adventure of the fifth year, to fight evil and do daring deeds of good that would sell another million books for J.K.R. And I was left standing alone.
The grounds of Hogwarts were absolutely beautiful. The Forbidden Forest stretched out over several hundred miles, the outskirts light and cheerful like something out of Bambi, and the deep inner forest dank and foreboding. Outside of the forest were long stretches of green grass, just starting to turn brownish-gold from the approaching cold weather.
The most beautiful of all was the lake, though. It was a perfect treasure in every way. The water was silver, with gold streaks where the sun hit it and emerald patches where you could see the mossy rocks underneath. It was the kind of lake where you'd expect an Excalibur-bearing woman to rise up from its depths, or mermaids to lounge on the sand, or a unicorn to lean over to lap up some of the calm, unbroken water.
Surrounded on one side by pine and oak and the other by huge willow trees, it was near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, but not so far from the school as to be a tedious walk.
And that's where I headed. I had no place else to go. Why do homework assignments? This wasn't my real school. Why head for the Common Room? There wasn't anyone there waiting for me. And I couldn't stay in the library another moment longer.
So I headed for the lake. I wasn't crying. That surprised me a bit. I cried about everything. Watching Titanic nearly sent me to the hospital for dehydration. But this, the one thing in my life that I probably should have cried about, wasn't getting to me at all.
But still, the lake was the only place I could think of to go. The Weeping Willow, the crying tree, looked very inviting. I hesitated for a moment, remembering the Whomping Willow, the prize fighting tree, was also here at Hogwarts, but after a moment of study I decided that this particular tree wouldn't fight back.
I was only a few feet away from the tree, when I saw that another girl was already occupying the space I had planned to sit in, staring at the water in a contemplative way. At first I thought she must be a nymph, a dryad, a fairy, some kind of magical creature, because she was dressed in a robe of pure white, which contrasted her jet-black hair and large black eyes. She looked older than me, but not too much older.
I started to back away, when I realized she hadn't noticed me at all. So, I sat down beside her, staring at the water.
Aha, there came the tears, right on cue.
The girl beside me glanced at me, then asked in a calm voice, "What do *you* have to be sad about?"
I looked back at her. "I had an awful fight with my only friends, all over something I can't help." I rubbed my face with my sleeve, and glanced back at the water.
"What house are you in?" she asked, her face suddenly looking suspicious.
"Gryffindor," I answered. "You?"
"Ravenclaw." Her face softened. "What did you and your friends fight about?" Her tone was motherly and concerned, but oddly detached.
"I have a secret," I started to explain, not knowing why, "and if I told them, they wouldn't believe me."
"Ah." She was silent for a long time. A moment later, she asked, "What if they did believe you?"
I thought about that for a moment, sniffled and wiped away more tears, then replied, "It would completely change their world. They wouldn't be able to live the same way again."
Her eyes widened a bit, and she turned to stare back at the water. Taking this as a signal that she didn't want to talk about it anymore, I also stared at the crystalline surface of the lake.
A moment later, she asked, "Could you tell me what your secret is?"
I stared at her, so surprised that I stopped crying. "You wouldn't believe me either."
"What if I swore that I would believe you?"
"It would rock your world."
"I think," and an odd smile came to her face, "that I could afford to have my world rocked a bit at the moment."
Indiscreet as it may have been, I decided to tell her. And for the next five minutes, I did.
"Where I come from, everyone is a Muggle," is how I started out. "There is no magic, nowhere, not really. Not like there is here. But people like to write fiction stories about magic. There is this one lady, named J.K. Rowling, who is really skilled about writing about magic. She writes books about this school called Hogwarts, and how all the students who go there are wizards and witches, and can do magic. And where I come from, this school is just a make-believe place, from that series of books. But somehow, I've ended up here," I gestured around, "and I'm talking to people who are just characters in the books. I never imagined that they really could actually be real. It's just a story, after all, and everyone here is just a character in that story. And yet, here I am. It doesn't make sense to me, but it's true." I watched her carefully.
Her eyes widened. "We're all just characters in books?"
"I'm the only one that I know of who isn't," I replied carefully.
She pondered this a moment. "What are the books about?"
"The first one is called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." You know who he is." She nodded, and I continued. "It's about how he came to Hogwarts, and how he defeated Voldemort and stopped him from getting the Sorcerer's Stone. The second book is about how he fought the monster in the Chamber of Secrets. The third is about how Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban and was apparently trying to kill him, and the fourth is all about the Triwizard Tournament."
"I remember all of that!" She looked excited now. "It's really all just made up by someone? All just books? And you've read them?"
"Yeah, I know a lot about them."
She suddenly got serious. "And these books, the books that I- we're- in, follow everything Harry Potter does?"
I nodded, and she grabbed my arm. "Did it say- did it say how a guy named Cedric Diggory died?"
I stared at her, surprised at her sudden seriousness. The look in her eyes was almost dangerous, and I was uncomfortable. "Yes, it does, but-"
"Tell me." She was speaking very softly, but her eyes- "Tell me about Cedric. Please."
I stared at her. Black hair, dark eyes, Ravenclaw- "Cho Chang," I whispered.
She smiled momentarily, but her eyes were still begging me. "Please. How did Cedric die?"
"You ARE Cho Chang!" I accused. "Why didn't you tell me?"
She grabbed me by the shoulders, and forced her face close to mine. "How," she said, pronouncing each word carefully, "did Cedric die?"
"Voldemort," I said, not knowing how else to answer. "He and Harry were in the maze, when Cedric was attacked by a spider. Harry tried to help him, and got hurt. They managed to stun the spider, but Harry was hurt and couldn't go for the cup. Cedric refused to take it, because Harry had helped him, and Harry also refused to take it, because Cedric had beaten him in everything else. Quidditch, the tasks, and even at asking you to the ball."
Cho turned red. "Yeah, poor Harry." She let go of my shoulders, but waved her hand for me to continue.
"So they decided to take the cup together, so that it would be a Hogwarts victory. But the cup was a Portkey."
Her eyes went even wider at this. "A Portkey? Where to?"
"I don't know where, exactly. But it was a graveyard. And Voldemort was there. He killed Cedric, and then-" I suddenly pictured Harry, the guy I knew, being tortured by Voldemort. It was a lot different picture than the one I got from reading the fourth book. After all, in the book he was just the hero; everyone was expecting Voldemort to try and hurt him. But Harry was a real person… He really, actually went through all that…
It was enough to make me feel sick. The look on my face must have warned Cho, because she said, "And that's how he died?"
"Yeah," I said.
She bit her lip, and turned to stare once more at the water. I watched her, puzzled. Why was she so sad? If someone had told me that my entire life was just a story for someone else's entertainment, then I'd have laughed at them, or committed suicide, or something drastic. But she was just quiet.
"We were going to get married, you know."
"What?"
"Cedric and me. He kept telling me how he'd try out for Quidditch for England, and if he didn't make it he'd become a Herbologist. He even drew a picture of the house he'd build. We were going to live together forever, and have bunches of kids." It wasn't an emotional confession, just a statement of fact.
I reached over and hugged her. She hugged me back for a moment, and then wiped her eyes. She'd been crying, just barely.
"But that doesn't have anything to do with your problem." She patted me on the back. "I can see why you wouldn't be able to tell Harry and his friends about this. They wouldn't believe you."
"I know," I said, wishing she could help me.
"Tell you what, I'll talk to Harry or Hermione about it. Maybe try and get them to lay off of you for a while." She waved a finger at me. "But you have to try to be extra nice to them, and show that you'd tell them about it if you could."
"Really? Thanks."
She stared at me in silence a few moments more, then sighed. "I need to get back to the castle. Now that I know all this… There are some things I have to fix. I'll talk to you later."
She left a little after that. Once again, I was alone. The sun was starting to go down, leaving reflections of amethysts and rubies across the lake surface. I stared at the water for a moment, tracing the rocks, barely visible underneath the water, with my eyes.
After a few minutes, I realized I wasn't just looking at rocks and stones. There was something under the surface that was too square to be a rock, and looked as if it was made of wood. I glanced behind around, but Cho was long gone, and there wasn't anyone else hanging around the lake. Most of the students were inside, trying to avoid the cool wind that the sunset had brought with it.
I climbed out from under the willow, and waded into the cool water. Whatever I had spotted was only a few feet out in the water, where it wasn't very deep, but it was hidden under the reflection of the trees. Only at sunset, when the light was at a certain angle, would anyone have spotted it. I hiked my robes up above my knees, but I still couldn't avoid getting a little wet.
There! It wasn't just a piece of driftwood, it was a chest! A wooden chest, half buried in the sandy bottom of the lake, with its rusted metal handle sticking up just barely high enough for me to reach without dropping the hem of my robes into the water.
I reached down, grabbed the handle, which was both rough from rust and slimy from the algae and mud under the water, and tugged. It wouldn't come lose. I dropped my robes into the water, (after all, I could always get dry again, and it was only about three feet deep here,) and grabbed on with both hands.
Pulling with all my might, I managed to move it just a few inches. I reached underwater and pushed away as many of the stones blocking it as I could move, and then yanked hard on the handle once more.
The chest came loose from the bottom of the lake with a jerk, and I fell backwards into the water.
So much for only getting a little wet; I was soaked from head to foot. But I had the chest.
I dragged it onto the shore. For something so big that had gotten stuck so stubbornly in the lake bottom, it was surprisingly light. Whoever had buried it must have had to pile rocks on top to keep it from floating to the surface.
There was no lock, I was happy to see, but that didn't really matter as the latch had rusted shut. Seeing no other alternative, I picked up a rock and broke through the thin wooden lid.
Inside was a single jagged-edged piece of paper. There were fine ink lines scribbled across it in an apparently random manner. The ink must have been waterproof, because the paper was slightly damp.
I took the paper carefully; it wasn't as yellowed with age as the one Ron found had been, and I was sure this was a second piece to whatever his paper was. The lines were going three ways: up and down, left to right, and diagonally from upper left corner to lower right. I studied it for a moment, then flipped it over.
On the back, in big loopy handwriting, were two letters. H.H.
I felt different. It was a difference in the same way that Saturday feels different than Monday, even just after you wake up. It's the way you feel different holding an A+ paper to your chest while your friends are waving around their C's and D's. It's the feeling when you watch your best guy friend open up secret admirer card, and pretend to be all surprised and excited about it, when you know that the signature is in your handwriting.
Dinnertime was awkward. After running up to the Common Room to change robes, I returned to the Great Hall and headed automatically to the end of the table where Harry and his friends always sat before I remembered that we weren't friends anymore. Not that I cared. I had a piece of their stupid map, and I knew where it had come from too.
Anyone who reads fanfiction, especially those who read Cassandra Claire's fantastic stories, knows immediately what H.H. stands for. Helga Hufflepuff.
If I had to guess, I'd think that Ron's piece said either G.G., S.S. or R.R., that is, Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, or Rowena Ravenclaw.
Ron was reading out of that stupid book he had found, "Secrets of the Founders." Hermione looked a bit interested, and I saw that Harry was pretending to listen, but was really distracted by watching something over Ron's shoulder. I tried to follow his gaze, and saw several people crowded in a group by the Ravenclaw table. Someone had burst into tears, which was probably what caught Harry's attention.
Ron waved his hand in front of Harry's face, directing his wandering attention back to the book. Then, Hermione suddenly whispered something in Ron's ear, and the three of them stared straight at me.
I turned around, and walked out of the Great Hall. There wasn't any malice in their looks, but I knew I wouldn't be welcome. So, I headed up to the Common Room.
Not a great decision, I realized halfway there, because I had skimped on lunch too, and was now pretty hungry. But eating dinner wasn't worth going back and trying to figure out how those three were going to deal with me.
The portrait of the Fat Lady was quite normal looking, until you got up close. She was a very huge lady in a green dress which seemed to barely contain the great folds of skin bulging out around her hips and shoulders. Her hand rested on a small table, with a pristine white tablecloth, and several flowers bloomed in a vase on the table. A bookcase rested behind her, and under her feet was a small wooden chest, covered in dust.
As you first walked up to her, you thought that she was one of those paintings with the eyes cut out, and someone behind the wall watching you. Then, she'd move, and her movement would be two dimensional. It might seem like her arm was moving forward or backward, but it was like that Nintendo game Paper Mario; a two-d character in a 3-d world.
"Lion fang," I recited the password and the huge portrait swung forward to show a small doorway cut out of the wall. I climbed through, to see Neville sitting on one of the huge couches that were scattered about the room, crying silently.
He wasn't really a fat boy, just very… pudgy. He had a babyish face, topped with blond hair and his small, childlike features looked strange in his wide round face. His eyes were red and puffy, and he sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve as I walked into the room.
"What's wrong?" I asked, trying to imitate the motherly tone Cho had used with me.
He sniffled as he stared up at me. "Trevor, my toad- he's dead!"
"Oh no." I sat down beside him, and put my arm around his shoulder. "Are you sure he isn't just missing?"
"I thought that too, but then…" He burst into tears again, loudly, and I hugged him closer. After a moment, he gained control of his tears. "M-Malfoy said he had been using it for t-t-target practice, and he gave me-" He pointed down at a shoebox resting at his feet.
I picked it up, and opened the box carefully.
"Ecch!" I nearly dropped the box, but instead replaced the lid. "Neville- I don't think that's Trevor. I think it's just some wild one that Malfoy's ripped apart. I'm pretty sure that this isn't your frog."
"Toad!" He corrected me immediately. "Are you sure that isn't him?"
Actually, I was pretty sure it was the toad. But no kid should have to go through life knowing his pet had been mutilated like that. "You know what? I was by the lake today-"
"That's why your hair is all wet!"
Rats, so people *could* notice. Oh well. "And I thought I saw a frog- excuse me, toad- near the water. I tried to catch him, but he jumped away. If that was him," which I was pretty sure it wasn't, "he's probably very happy."
"You think so?" Neville's face lit up. Poor kid, to be stuck with a name like "Neville."
"I'm pretty sure it was him."
"What color was he?"
What color were toads? Green? No, that was frogs. Um…"Um, brown?"
"It WAS him!" Neville grinned.
"See?" Phew. "He's probably found himself a toad girlfriend, and a nice muddy house to live in." I nudged the shoebox under the couch with my toe, hoping Neville would forget about it. "I had a hamster once-"
"A what?"
"A rat," I amended, "who ran away. We found her a couple weeks later, downstairs, and she had had lots of little hamster- er, rat- babies. She was perfectly happy."
"Then I probably should get a new pet."
"Yeah, that would probably be a good idea," I agreed, kicking the shoebox entirely out of view as I stood up.
"Would you go to Hogsmeade with me on Saturday and help me pick one out?" His eyes widened.
"Sure, that'd be great. I'll see you Saturday." I walked around the corner and waited for Neville to leave the Common Room. He exited the portrait hole, tripping over the doorframe. I then walked quietly back over to the sofa, and pulled the shoebox containing the unfortunate toad out. Could Malfoy have really done this?
Trevor got a decent burial. And, luckily for me, Neville saw a toad by the lake the next afternoon. It disappeared into the water with a splash before he could see it too well, but he was convinced it was Trevor. All's well that ends well, I suppose.
Except for toads.
I was still wide-eyed and breathless from my flying experience, and therefore wasn't very observant as we entered the Great Hall, where lunch was already well underway. After sitting on Ron, apologizing very stupidly, then sitting down beside him in the empty chair I had been aiming for in the first place, I stared blankly at the table, grinning. I couldn't get rid of the feeling of cool air rushing past my face, making me squint my eyes, of seeing the ground far below me, hearing nothing but wind in my ears as I soared high abo-
"Hello?" Hermione jabbed me in the elbow, for what I realized was the third time. "Would you please inform Ron that he can't hog the pumpkin juice all to himself, and that others at the table may like some?"
"Would you please inform Hermione that I was just pouring myself a cup, and that if she wanted the stupid juice she could've just said so?"
"Would you please inform Ron that he needn't be so rude, and he's already had three glasses of pumpkin juice and he'll bloat like a water balloon if he drinks any more?"
"Would you please inform Hermione that we on the Quidditch team have to keep up our strength?" Now both Ron and Hermione were leaning across me to glare at each other, face to face, and they were getting louder and louder with each sentence.
"Would you please inform Ron that I AM on the Quidditch team?"
"Would you please inform Hermione that 'backup Chaser' can not remotely compare to Beater?"
"Would you please inform-" Hermione stopped as I banged my fist hard on the table and stood up.
"Inform yourselves," I said, "that I am not going to get in the middle of your little spat. I am in too good of a mood to have the two of you ruin it, no matter how much you like each other." I stressed the word 'like' in a way that made both Hermione and Ron start to protest, blushing furiously. Of course, I'm a devoted H/H worshipper myself, but I knew teenage guys and gals well enough to know what will get them to shut up. I had just convinced the two of them that the more they argued, the more people thought they liked each other, which would effectively keep them quiet for the rest of the month at least.
I reached over the table to quickly snag a crusty white roll, and walked away chewing, while Hermione and Ron sat back down and tried to concentrate on their plates, not speaking to or looking at each other.
Somehow Harry and I became friends that day. I remembered a line from book one, "There are some things you just can't share without ending up friends, and defeating a twelve-foot troll is one of them." I guess flying for the first time is another one.
But it was a shaky, not-quite-sure friendship. He still didn't completely understand me. I, of course, still thought he was a weak and shallow character, who went with the flow instead of shaping his circumstances. But he was a nice guy.
It was only when I was alone, usually in bed at night, that I could stop thinking of all of them as real people, and again think of them as the names that had become so popular.
After all, almost no fanfic writers actually thought of them as real people when they started writing. Usually fanfiction was just another way to get either you or the female character you wished you could be into a romantic relationship with Harry, Ron, Draco or Percy. (Yes, I've seen it done.)
Would I ever be able to write again, I found myself wondering one night as I stared at the dark ceiling, knowing that Harry, Ron and Hermione were no longer just names, but were actual people? It would be like writing about one of my own best friends.
It WOULD be writing about one of my own best friends, I realized a moment later. Harry was now a friend. I shuddered as I thought of my "original" characters that I had forced him to be with. I couldn't imagine him liking any of my characters, much less kissing them or risking his life for them.
And with the depressing thought that I'd failed as an author, I went to sleep.
History of Magic class was as uninteresting as ever the following Monday. However, we did get an interesting homework assignment.
At least, Hermione and I thought it was interesting. Almost everyone else thought it was just a lot of work.
"As you know," Professor Binns said near the end of class, "the Hogwarts library keeps careful records of who checks out which book when. These records have been kept ever since Hogwarts was founded."
I had already chewed my nails down to the quick, and was ready to just give up trying to stay awake and zonk out on the table like Neville, who was sitting beside me, when I saw that Hermione was watching Binns with a gleam in her eye. I tuned him back in just in time in time to hear the homework assignment.
"I want you all to go to the library this afternoon and check out the dates in the front of the books. Perhaps you might find a book that was checked out by Godric Gryffindor himself, although that's not very likely," he said. He wasn't watching us; he almost never did, after all, but instead wrote incomprehensible notes on the blackboard or stared at a pile of books and papers on his desk.
That afternoon, the library was crowded with fifth year students, all opening the covers of the books, scanning the list of names and dates inside, then either rushing them to Madame Pomfrey's desk or shoving them back on the shelf dejectedly.
The library was big enough to get lost in, and so Harry, Ron, Hermione and I all had a bookcase to ourselves to search.
"Look, here's one checked out a hundred years ago, see?" Hermione was showing him. "Jezebel Jenkins, 1896."
"This one's almost eighty," Ron said, holding out a large book with a dusty red cover.
I was holding a very dusty book too, but I wasn't scanning the long list of names and dates in the front. Instead, I was peering over the top at a group of Slytherins nearby the Restricted section. Draco Malfoy was with them, and he was laughing. I noticed that even when he was with his friends he seemed to have more of a smirk than a smile, and that his laughter was still full of scorn.
"Hey, look!" Harry was holding a book, "A Wizard's Guide To Ancient Egypt", and staring at it with wide eyes. "This one was checked out by my dad!"
I turned away from my Draco-watching to peer over Harry's right shoulder. Ron and Hermione jostled each other for his left.
Yep, there it was: James Potter, February 21, 1978. I shrugged, and turned away to keep looking, but Harry was holding the book as if it was the Holy Grail.
"My dad read this," he said softly, and something in his tone made me turn back to look at him. His eyes were still wide, his glasses had slid so far down his nose they were about to fall off, but he didn't care. Hermione squeezed his shoulder with a gentle hand, and he looked away and smiled at her, then replaced the book on the shelf.
Ass I turned back to shelves, I heard Ron's exclamation.
"Hey, you'll never guess who checked this one out!"
I turned, and saw he was holding a book called "Secrets of the Founders." He was goggling at the front page.
"Who? My dad?" Harry dropped the book he had just pulled out and turned to look over Ron's shoulder. His jaw dropped. "Oh."
That was all it took to get me interested as well. I stood on my tiptoes to look over Ron's head, and froze. Hermione must have looked to, because she said, "Oh my."
Tom Riddle, May 2, 1953.
I whistled in appreciation of the find. "Voldemort, huh?"
They all stared at me for a moment. "So, you know that Voldemort's other name was-" Harry started to say, then cut himself off. "Never mind, I already know the answer."
"I'm definitely keeping this one," Ron said, starting to grin. "Anything Voldemort was interested in has to be pretty evil. And this is about the secrets of the Founders, so…" He gave Hermione a nasty grin. "Wonder what kind of secrets they were?"
"Oh, hush up, Ron." Hermione gave a long-suffering sigh. "You have such a dirty mind."
"What? Did I say anything like that?" He put on his most innocent look. "Did I?" He turned to me and Harry, supposedly for support. Harry shook his head, smiling, as Ron turned back to the book.
"Uh-oh, this is pretty old, the pages are coming out," Ron said a moment later. Then, "Wait a minute, this isn't a page! Look!" Indeed, he was holding in his hand a piece of paper, thicker and more yellowed than the pages of the book.
"It looks like a map or something," Ron said as once again the three of us crowded around him.
"It is!" Hermione snatched it from Ron, and stared at it for a moment. "But it doesn't make any sense."
Harry gently tugged it from Hermione's hands and stared down at it. "It can't be a map, it's too disorganized." He held it out to me, but I shook my head.
"No thanks, I'm no good at figuring this kind of thing out."
I swear, my brain had disappeared for a moment. It must have been the staring at Draco that did it, because I wasn't thinking at all.
"Figuring what kind of thing out?" Hermione asked.
"Plot twists and stuff like that," I explained, turning back to the bookshelves. "I mean, like in the first book, I actually thought it was Snape, and I never even expected a plot twist. And I didn't catch any of the clues in the next few books, either. I'm no good at that kind of thing." I pulled out a rather small book that was falling apart, and flipped open the cover expertly. "Hey look, this one's over 200 years-" I turned back to the three, to find that they were giving me looks ranging between friendly bewilderment and angry suspicion.
"What," Hermione asked almost conversationally, "do you mean by 'in the first book?'"
I stopped breathing for a moment as I realized exactly what I'd just said.
"I didn't say that."
"Yes, you did."
"No, I didn't," I protested, trying to come up with a way to recover. How could I have said something so abysmally stupid?
"And," Ron cut in, "you also mentioned other books. What books are you talking about?"
"No books, nothing," I said quickly, wishing that they would just leave it alone. I didn't mean to say that, I didn't mean to say that, please, PLEASE let me not really have said that.
"Might this have something to do with where you're from, and how you know everything about us?" Harry, I thought you were on MY side! But he was staring at me now with the same intensity of the other two. I took a deep breath, forcing down the urge to just turn and run, and instead deciding to try and reason with them.
"Look, I'm sorry I said that. I can't explain it, or I would, really," I tried to say.
"Why can't you explain it?" If he had been angry, I could have burst into tears or run away, but Harry was as cool and calm as he usually was.
"Because you wouldn't believe me!"
Now Ron was angry. "You don't know that! We might believe you, whatever this earth-shattering secret is, we might believe it! You don't know that we wouldn't!" He crossed his arms. "Then again, you know everything, don't you." Harry had used almost the same phrase on me only a few days ago, and it had sounded so friendly then. Why was it now so different?
"Look, you just have to trust me!"
"But we don't trust you. I can't trust someone who keeps secrets, and tries to lie to me," Hermione said. Oh no, oh no, oh no, I can't have them fight with me! Things were going so well!
The plot had just thickened, and now my characters- and in that flash of anger they WERE *my* characters, not real people- were trying to kick me out of the story! How dare they!
"Just leave me alone, Hermione. You have to trust me. You don't have any other choice."
Something in my tone must have repelled the other girl, because she stepped back a bit, looking- not angry, really, but hurt. Ron was angry, no doubt about it. And Harry-
Oh god. Harry was staring at me in a way that there was no name for. I felt like it was only the strength of that gaze keeping me on my feet, and yet it hurt. Oh, just having him look at me hurt. But what he said hurt even worse.
"I don't know what this big secret is, or why you can't tell us. Maybe there is something so big, so incomprehensible, that we wouldn't believe you if you told us." He took a breath. "But I trust Hermione and Ron implicitly. They're my friends, and a big part of that is that we can trust each other. But if you can't trust us enough to tell us something that's obviously important, then we can't trust you."
He didn't have to say the obvious: If we can't trust you, we can't be friends.
"You wouldn't do that to me," I said, trying to relate this person staring at me to the one who fulfilled my dreams and took me flying just days ago. "You, of all people, wouldn't do that to me."
He turned away.
I was stunned. What happened to the good, kind, chivalrous Harry Potter, hero of heroes and king of the nice guys? Inhuman, immortal star of the best selling books ever?
He was turning his back on me?
"Are you telling me," I kept my tone as even and calm as his had been, even though I felt like screaming, "that the only reason you've been nice to me is to try to find out how I know all this stuff about you?"
The hesitation as he walked away, the pause before he took the next step, made me realize that no, he had been nice because he liked me. But I knew the question had hurt his pride, somewhere.
"You deceitful, horrible person," I whispered, not believing what I was saying but wanting to hurt him badly for turning his back on me. "No wonder you were almost in Slytherin. It's where you belong."
He stopped, and I almost thought he would turn around, either to yell at me or to protest my accusations. But he just stood there, with Ron and Hermione staring between the two of us. I turned my back on all three of them.
It was several moments later that I realized I was standing alone. They had left, probably to discuss the map or whatever that Ron had found, to start their adventure of the fifth year, to fight evil and do daring deeds of good that would sell another million books for J.K.R. And I was left standing alone.
The grounds of Hogwarts were absolutely beautiful. The Forbidden Forest stretched out over several hundred miles, the outskirts light and cheerful like something out of Bambi, and the deep inner forest dank and foreboding. Outside of the forest were long stretches of green grass, just starting to turn brownish-gold from the approaching cold weather.
The most beautiful of all was the lake, though. It was a perfect treasure in every way. The water was silver, with gold streaks where the sun hit it and emerald patches where you could see the mossy rocks underneath. It was the kind of lake where you'd expect an Excalibur-bearing woman to rise up from its depths, or mermaids to lounge on the sand, or a unicorn to lean over to lap up some of the calm, unbroken water.
Surrounded on one side by pine and oak and the other by huge willow trees, it was near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, but not so far from the school as to be a tedious walk.
And that's where I headed. I had no place else to go. Why do homework assignments? This wasn't my real school. Why head for the Common Room? There wasn't anyone there waiting for me. And I couldn't stay in the library another moment longer.
So I headed for the lake. I wasn't crying. That surprised me a bit. I cried about everything. Watching Titanic nearly sent me to the hospital for dehydration. But this, the one thing in my life that I probably should have cried about, wasn't getting to me at all.
But still, the lake was the only place I could think of to go. The Weeping Willow, the crying tree, looked very inviting. I hesitated for a moment, remembering the Whomping Willow, the prize fighting tree, was also here at Hogwarts, but after a moment of study I decided that this particular tree wouldn't fight back.
I was only a few feet away from the tree, when I saw that another girl was already occupying the space I had planned to sit in, staring at the water in a contemplative way. At first I thought she must be a nymph, a dryad, a fairy, some kind of magical creature, because she was dressed in a robe of pure white, which contrasted her jet-black hair and large black eyes. She looked older than me, but not too much older.
I started to back away, when I realized she hadn't noticed me at all. So, I sat down beside her, staring at the water.
Aha, there came the tears, right on cue.
The girl beside me glanced at me, then asked in a calm voice, "What do *you* have to be sad about?"
I looked back at her. "I had an awful fight with my only friends, all over something I can't help." I rubbed my face with my sleeve, and glanced back at the water.
"What house are you in?" she asked, her face suddenly looking suspicious.
"Gryffindor," I answered. "You?"
"Ravenclaw." Her face softened. "What did you and your friends fight about?" Her tone was motherly and concerned, but oddly detached.
"I have a secret," I started to explain, not knowing why, "and if I told them, they wouldn't believe me."
"Ah." She was silent for a long time. A moment later, she asked, "What if they did believe you?"
I thought about that for a moment, sniffled and wiped away more tears, then replied, "It would completely change their world. They wouldn't be able to live the same way again."
Her eyes widened a bit, and she turned to stare back at the water. Taking this as a signal that she didn't want to talk about it anymore, I also stared at the crystalline surface of the lake.
A moment later, she asked, "Could you tell me what your secret is?"
I stared at her, so surprised that I stopped crying. "You wouldn't believe me either."
"What if I swore that I would believe you?"
"It would rock your world."
"I think," and an odd smile came to her face, "that I could afford to have my world rocked a bit at the moment."
Indiscreet as it may have been, I decided to tell her. And for the next five minutes, I did.
"Where I come from, everyone is a Muggle," is how I started out. "There is no magic, nowhere, not really. Not like there is here. But people like to write fiction stories about magic. There is this one lady, named J.K. Rowling, who is really skilled about writing about magic. She writes books about this school called Hogwarts, and how all the students who go there are wizards and witches, and can do magic. And where I come from, this school is just a make-believe place, from that series of books. But somehow, I've ended up here," I gestured around, "and I'm talking to people who are just characters in the books. I never imagined that they really could actually be real. It's just a story, after all, and everyone here is just a character in that story. And yet, here I am. It doesn't make sense to me, but it's true." I watched her carefully.
Her eyes widened. "We're all just characters in books?"
"I'm the only one that I know of who isn't," I replied carefully.
She pondered this a moment. "What are the books about?"
"The first one is called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." You know who he is." She nodded, and I continued. "It's about how he came to Hogwarts, and how he defeated Voldemort and stopped him from getting the Sorcerer's Stone. The second book is about how he fought the monster in the Chamber of Secrets. The third is about how Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban and was apparently trying to kill him, and the fourth is all about the Triwizard Tournament."
"I remember all of that!" She looked excited now. "It's really all just made up by someone? All just books? And you've read them?"
"Yeah, I know a lot about them."
She suddenly got serious. "And these books, the books that I- we're- in, follow everything Harry Potter does?"
I nodded, and she grabbed my arm. "Did it say- did it say how a guy named Cedric Diggory died?"
I stared at her, surprised at her sudden seriousness. The look in her eyes was almost dangerous, and I was uncomfortable. "Yes, it does, but-"
"Tell me." She was speaking very softly, but her eyes- "Tell me about Cedric. Please."
I stared at her. Black hair, dark eyes, Ravenclaw- "Cho Chang," I whispered.
She smiled momentarily, but her eyes were still begging me. "Please. How did Cedric die?"
"You ARE Cho Chang!" I accused. "Why didn't you tell me?"
She grabbed me by the shoulders, and forced her face close to mine. "How," she said, pronouncing each word carefully, "did Cedric die?"
"Voldemort," I said, not knowing how else to answer. "He and Harry were in the maze, when Cedric was attacked by a spider. Harry tried to help him, and got hurt. They managed to stun the spider, but Harry was hurt and couldn't go for the cup. Cedric refused to take it, because Harry had helped him, and Harry also refused to take it, because Cedric had beaten him in everything else. Quidditch, the tasks, and even at asking you to the ball."
Cho turned red. "Yeah, poor Harry." She let go of my shoulders, but waved her hand for me to continue.
"So they decided to take the cup together, so that it would be a Hogwarts victory. But the cup was a Portkey."
Her eyes went even wider at this. "A Portkey? Where to?"
"I don't know where, exactly. But it was a graveyard. And Voldemort was there. He killed Cedric, and then-" I suddenly pictured Harry, the guy I knew, being tortured by Voldemort. It was a lot different picture than the one I got from reading the fourth book. After all, in the book he was just the hero; everyone was expecting Voldemort to try and hurt him. But Harry was a real person… He really, actually went through all that…
It was enough to make me feel sick. The look on my face must have warned Cho, because she said, "And that's how he died?"
"Yeah," I said.
She bit her lip, and turned to stare once more at the water. I watched her, puzzled. Why was she so sad? If someone had told me that my entire life was just a story for someone else's entertainment, then I'd have laughed at them, or committed suicide, or something drastic. But she was just quiet.
"We were going to get married, you know."
"What?"
"Cedric and me. He kept telling me how he'd try out for Quidditch for England, and if he didn't make it he'd become a Herbologist. He even drew a picture of the house he'd build. We were going to live together forever, and have bunches of kids." It wasn't an emotional confession, just a statement of fact.
I reached over and hugged her. She hugged me back for a moment, and then wiped her eyes. She'd been crying, just barely.
"But that doesn't have anything to do with your problem." She patted me on the back. "I can see why you wouldn't be able to tell Harry and his friends about this. They wouldn't believe you."
"I know," I said, wishing she could help me.
"Tell you what, I'll talk to Harry or Hermione about it. Maybe try and get them to lay off of you for a while." She waved a finger at me. "But you have to try to be extra nice to them, and show that you'd tell them about it if you could."
"Really? Thanks."
She stared at me in silence a few moments more, then sighed. "I need to get back to the castle. Now that I know all this… There are some things I have to fix. I'll talk to you later."
She left a little after that. Once again, I was alone. The sun was starting to go down, leaving reflections of amethysts and rubies across the lake surface. I stared at the water for a moment, tracing the rocks, barely visible underneath the water, with my eyes.
After a few minutes, I realized I wasn't just looking at rocks and stones. There was something under the surface that was too square to be a rock, and looked as if it was made of wood. I glanced behind around, but Cho was long gone, and there wasn't anyone else hanging around the lake. Most of the students were inside, trying to avoid the cool wind that the sunset had brought with it.
I climbed out from under the willow, and waded into the cool water. Whatever I had spotted was only a few feet out in the water, where it wasn't very deep, but it was hidden under the reflection of the trees. Only at sunset, when the light was at a certain angle, would anyone have spotted it. I hiked my robes up above my knees, but I still couldn't avoid getting a little wet.
There! It wasn't just a piece of driftwood, it was a chest! A wooden chest, half buried in the sandy bottom of the lake, with its rusted metal handle sticking up just barely high enough for me to reach without dropping the hem of my robes into the water.
I reached down, grabbed the handle, which was both rough from rust and slimy from the algae and mud under the water, and tugged. It wouldn't come lose. I dropped my robes into the water, (after all, I could always get dry again, and it was only about three feet deep here,) and grabbed on with both hands.
Pulling with all my might, I managed to move it just a few inches. I reached underwater and pushed away as many of the stones blocking it as I could move, and then yanked hard on the handle once more.
The chest came loose from the bottom of the lake with a jerk, and I fell backwards into the water.
So much for only getting a little wet; I was soaked from head to foot. But I had the chest.
I dragged it onto the shore. For something so big that had gotten stuck so stubbornly in the lake bottom, it was surprisingly light. Whoever had buried it must have had to pile rocks on top to keep it from floating to the surface.
There was no lock, I was happy to see, but that didn't really matter as the latch had rusted shut. Seeing no other alternative, I picked up a rock and broke through the thin wooden lid.
Inside was a single jagged-edged piece of paper. There were fine ink lines scribbled across it in an apparently random manner. The ink must have been waterproof, because the paper was slightly damp.
I took the paper carefully; it wasn't as yellowed with age as the one Ron found had been, and I was sure this was a second piece to whatever his paper was. The lines were going three ways: up and down, left to right, and diagonally from upper left corner to lower right. I studied it for a moment, then flipped it over.
On the back, in big loopy handwriting, were two letters. H.H.
I felt different. It was a difference in the same way that Saturday feels different than Monday, even just after you wake up. It's the way you feel different holding an A+ paper to your chest while your friends are waving around their C's and D's. It's the feeling when you watch your best guy friend open up secret admirer card, and pretend to be all surprised and excited about it, when you know that the signature is in your handwriting.
Dinnertime was awkward. After running up to the Common Room to change robes, I returned to the Great Hall and headed automatically to the end of the table where Harry and his friends always sat before I remembered that we weren't friends anymore. Not that I cared. I had a piece of their stupid map, and I knew where it had come from too.
Anyone who reads fanfiction, especially those who read Cassandra Claire's fantastic stories, knows immediately what H.H. stands for. Helga Hufflepuff.
If I had to guess, I'd think that Ron's piece said either G.G., S.S. or R.R., that is, Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, or Rowena Ravenclaw.
Ron was reading out of that stupid book he had found, "Secrets of the Founders." Hermione looked a bit interested, and I saw that Harry was pretending to listen, but was really distracted by watching something over Ron's shoulder. I tried to follow his gaze, and saw several people crowded in a group by the Ravenclaw table. Someone had burst into tears, which was probably what caught Harry's attention.
Ron waved his hand in front of Harry's face, directing his wandering attention back to the book. Then, Hermione suddenly whispered something in Ron's ear, and the three of them stared straight at me.
I turned around, and walked out of the Great Hall. There wasn't any malice in their looks, but I knew I wouldn't be welcome. So, I headed up to the Common Room.
Not a great decision, I realized halfway there, because I had skimped on lunch too, and was now pretty hungry. But eating dinner wasn't worth going back and trying to figure out how those three were going to deal with me.
The portrait of the Fat Lady was quite normal looking, until you got up close. She was a very huge lady in a green dress which seemed to barely contain the great folds of skin bulging out around her hips and shoulders. Her hand rested on a small table, with a pristine white tablecloth, and several flowers bloomed in a vase on the table. A bookcase rested behind her, and under her feet was a small wooden chest, covered in dust.
As you first walked up to her, you thought that she was one of those paintings with the eyes cut out, and someone behind the wall watching you. Then, she'd move, and her movement would be two dimensional. It might seem like her arm was moving forward or backward, but it was like that Nintendo game Paper Mario; a two-d character in a 3-d world.
"Lion fang," I recited the password and the huge portrait swung forward to show a small doorway cut out of the wall. I climbed through, to see Neville sitting on one of the huge couches that were scattered about the room, crying silently.
He wasn't really a fat boy, just very… pudgy. He had a babyish face, topped with blond hair and his small, childlike features looked strange in his wide round face. His eyes were red and puffy, and he sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve as I walked into the room.
"What's wrong?" I asked, trying to imitate the motherly tone Cho had used with me.
He sniffled as he stared up at me. "Trevor, my toad- he's dead!"
"Oh no." I sat down beside him, and put my arm around his shoulder. "Are you sure he isn't just missing?"
"I thought that too, but then…" He burst into tears again, loudly, and I hugged him closer. After a moment, he gained control of his tears. "M-Malfoy said he had been using it for t-t-target practice, and he gave me-" He pointed down at a shoebox resting at his feet.
I picked it up, and opened the box carefully.
"Ecch!" I nearly dropped the box, but instead replaced the lid. "Neville- I don't think that's Trevor. I think it's just some wild one that Malfoy's ripped apart. I'm pretty sure that this isn't your frog."
"Toad!" He corrected me immediately. "Are you sure that isn't him?"
Actually, I was pretty sure it was the toad. But no kid should have to go through life knowing his pet had been mutilated like that. "You know what? I was by the lake today-"
"That's why your hair is all wet!"
Rats, so people *could* notice. Oh well. "And I thought I saw a frog- excuse me, toad- near the water. I tried to catch him, but he jumped away. If that was him," which I was pretty sure it wasn't, "he's probably very happy."
"You think so?" Neville's face lit up. Poor kid, to be stuck with a name like "Neville."
"I'm pretty sure it was him."
"What color was he?"
What color were toads? Green? No, that was frogs. Um…"Um, brown?"
"It WAS him!" Neville grinned.
"See?" Phew. "He's probably found himself a toad girlfriend, and a nice muddy house to live in." I nudged the shoebox under the couch with my toe, hoping Neville would forget about it. "I had a hamster once-"
"A what?"
"A rat," I amended, "who ran away. We found her a couple weeks later, downstairs, and she had had lots of little hamster- er, rat- babies. She was perfectly happy."
"Then I probably should get a new pet."
"Yeah, that would probably be a good idea," I agreed, kicking the shoebox entirely out of view as I stood up.
"Would you go to Hogsmeade with me on Saturday and help me pick one out?" His eyes widened.
"Sure, that'd be great. I'll see you Saturday." I walked around the corner and waited for Neville to leave the Common Room. He exited the portrait hole, tripping over the doorframe. I then walked quietly back over to the sofa, and pulled the shoebox containing the unfortunate toad out. Could Malfoy have really done this?
Trevor got a decent burial. And, luckily for me, Neville saw a toad by the lake the next afternoon. It disappeared into the water with a splash before he could see it too well, but he was convinced it was Trevor. All's well that ends well, I suppose.
Except for toads.