As you may have noticed, this bears basically no resemblance to things in light of (joyous!) OOTP. But never mind all that. Anyone who can give hints as to formatting and things is welcome to do so!

CHAPTER TWO

Harry re-entered the Gryffindor common room, where Ron was attempting to subtly shoo the younger students off to bed, while Hermione reversed some over-done stretching spells that the third and fourth years had attempted in order to maximise their chances of winning the Giant Twister match. The senior Gryffindors were idling and chatting in small groups scattered around the room, and Harry glanced around them before deciding to approach some of the girls by the fire: if anyone knew the identity of mysterious late-night wanderers, he reckoned, it'd have to be Pavarti Patil's socially keyed-in bunch of flibbertigibbets. Pavarti seemed to have taken her twin sister's elevation to the Prefecture in her stride. if the truth be told, she seemed to regard it positively unnatural that Padma took her grades more seriously than her boyfriends. Harry approached the giggling duo with caution.

"Er. Pavarti?" Pavarti flicked back her long dark hair and, out of habit and a need to keep in practice, batted her eyelashes at him. "Um. you know most people around the school, don't you?" Lavender chimed in first. "We know EVERYONE, Harry. Why - seen a girl you like?" "We can put names to faces, faces to names," agreed Pavarti. "Er," said Harry, "it IS a girl -" "Ha!" exclaimed Lavender. "- but it's not because. I mean, she was just. I." Harry ground to a halt, but Pavarti broke in in a business-like fashion. "Height?" "Ah, quite tall." Harry looked around the room desperately before settling on ". about the same as Ginny Weasley." "Build?"

"Umm. pretty sturdy."

Lavender raised her eyebrows in surprise. She still couldn't believe that Harry's inquiry was the product of idle curiosity, and the last girl he had been reputed to like - nothing had ever been proven, though Lavender and Pavarti suspected that she'd kissed him on the last day of term the year before, when her family had moved to New Zealand - had been the slim and diminutive Cho Chang. "Hair colour?" she continued nevertheless. "Sort of middle brown, I suppose." "Eyes?" "Er. they might have been blue. Or maybe -" "Complexion?" Harry was fairly close to panicking amidst all this unexpected detail. Lavender took pity on him. "Well. was she pale? Freckled? Tanned?" Harry shook his head at each. "You've got to have SOME idea," she continued, exasperated. "Pink?" he hazarded. "Rosy, Harry, rosy," admonished Pavarti. She and Lavender looked at each other. "How old did you say she was?" "About our age. Young-looking, though - she could have been a fifth year, or even a fourth." "And where did you see her?" "Down the third floor corridor, near the east tower. But she seemed pretty lost - I don't think she came from around that way." There was a long pause. "Harry," said Lavender eventually. "I do believe you've stumped us." "Not the faintest idea," added Pavarti. "Well, I suppose you can't know EVERYBODY -" "Harry," said Lavender solemnly, "there are only about seventy people in each house. There are less than one hundred and fifty girls in this whole school. And there is no-one at all who matches that description who should be lost anywhere near that part of the castle." "And we should know," broke in Pavarti, seeing Harry's look of blatant disbelief, "because I'm always in. er." She started to giggle. Harry was a bit lost. "She means," said Lavender, "that with our extensive," (and she too giggled) "exploration of the social aspects of inter-house competitions, not to mention my esteemed colleague's familial connections, we're in a fairly good position to know where everyone belongs." The two were nearly hysterical for at least a minute, before Lavender admitted, "Of course, she could be new." This seemed sensible until Pavarti pointed out, " But we would have seen her being sorted. Anyway, there haven't been additions to other years before, have there?" Harry couldn't remember any, so he muttered his thanks and made excuses to escape, before heading up to bed with a chubby, smiling face in his head and absolutely no way of identifying it.

The ensuing days developed into the same rhythm as previous years had: Harry, Ron, and Hermione started to memorise their timetables as they muddled between Transfiguration, Charms, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Divination (for Ron and Harry), Arithmancy (for Hermione), Care of Magical Creatures, and Potions. Much to Harry's disgust, the temper and overall personality of Professor Snape had NOT improved over the summer holidays. He remained as unsmiling, unfeeling, and unfair as ever, taking twenty-five points from Gryffindor in the very first lesson because, due to a clerical error, the entire class had bought the rong books for the year. Needless to say, Slytherin did not suffer the same fate.
Added to this was the enormous load of homework everyone was suffering - Harry had thought that the end of the previous year had been bad, but it looked as though the next two would be demonic in nature - and Ron and Hermione's constant bickering, so it was really no surprise that Harry took more and more to wandering the corridors in the evenings after dinner, when the Gryffindor common room was full of the racket made by seventy exuberant young people. One night he got into an almost trance-like rhythm, the steady pad of his footsteps allowing his mind to traverse much farther than the bounds of the castle and its grounds. He was just enjoying an imaginary conversation with his godfather, Sirius Black, when a miaow startled him from his reverie. Harry stopped mid-step, and looked down at Mrs Norris, the odious cat of the even more odious Hogwarts caretaker, Argus Filch. Harry checked his watch hurriedly. 3 am! If he was found in the hallway this late, he could say goodbye to his prefecture - and his toenails, if Filch had anything to do with it - faster than he could say, "Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans." He backed away from the staring cat and began to run through the darkened corridors. Around corners, down staircases, past statues, portraits, and gently snoring suits of armour - at one stage he heard footsteps apart from his own and wheezing separate form his ragged breaths; he quickly ducked through a two-door classroom and emerged, panting, in a quiet hallway he hadn't seen before. There was no sound of Filch or Mrs Norris, so Harry leaned heavily against a nearby wall in an attempt to calm and quiet his breathing. As it turned out, his shortness of breath had one great advantage: it prevented him from crying out as the wall did a 180-degree rotation and left him in yet another room that he had never been near before.

There were wooden floorboards which creaked a little as Harry stepped forward. There were rugs on the floor, and enchanted prints of muggle paintings on the walls. There were books and ornaments on the shelves, an open jewellery box with a real live fairy sleeping next to its pedestal, a white rocking chair with a teddy-bear on it. And a four-poster bed just like his own, with white and blue and purple hangings, pushed back and tied with ribbons. And a chubby girl asleep, with a little glowing ball in one hand, and a rag doll in the other.
Harry went back to the wall and pushed - he could digest all of this when he was safely back in the Gryffindor tower - but nothing happened. He took out his wand: "Alohamora!" but still the wall remained solid. There was only one other option: he took the only door, half-open on his right. It led through other rooms - rooms with pots of flowers, rooms where old portraits were stacked and covered in dusty canvases - up a winding ramp, until there was a single door at the end. Harry pushed it open carefully, and stepped into a familiar room where headmasters dozed in portraits on the walls, and a phoenix was asleep on a perch with its head under its wing.
It was Dumbledore's office.