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Chapter Two
'A Plan Unveiled'
Harry and Ron were up in their room, eagerly awaiting midnight. After leaving Hermione earlier, they had been debating if she had meant it when she said she was going to McGonagall.
"I don't know, Harry, she seemed really pissed, and you know we've done a lot more crazier stuff that she's even agreed to do without even being asked. I think she's still fuming about Potions class and that bastard Malfoy. Oh, just put us in a room together and I'll knock his molars to the front of his mouth. That'll fix that smug look up…"
"Ron," Harry interrupted, "do you really think she was just trying to lead us off? I mean, you don't think she'd go after Malfoy alone, do you?"
"I don't know, Harry," he whispered when Seamus Finnigan and Neville Longbottom came in. "I doubt it."
At quarter to midnight, when Seamus and Neville were sound asleep, Harry grabbed his cloak from his trunk and whispered to Ron, "It's time." They both got under the cloak and headed out the door. When they got down to the common room, Harry stopped Ron and urged him to go to the back of the room.
"What?" Ron asked.
"I don't think we should do this," Harry said worryingly, thinking about all the times he had broken the rules. It had all been for good reasons, and this was not a good reason—well, at least the way his Professors would see it. As much as he wanted to see Malfoy get caught, he was feeling quite certain that it wasn't going to turn out pretty if they were to show up there.
"Ron, we promised Hermione. Besides, I'd actually like to wake up tomorrow so I can enjoy whatever's left of Malfoy."
"Oh, Harry, don't tell me you're backing out now! I know we promised Hermione, but I'm sure she won't find out we were there if we take the cloak."
"No, Ron. We have to sit this one out; I have a really bad feeling about this."
"Aah, bloody hell. Why'd you have to ruin such a perfect opportunity to see the look on that idiot's face…"
"Ron."
"Oh, all right; let's go back upstairs."
It was now midnight, and they were walking glumly back up the stairs to their room when Harry halted suddenly halfway up the stairs, nearly sending Ron flying down if it weren't for the rails that he grabbed.
"What in the name of Godric's nuts…"
"Shit, Ron." Ron looked up to see the horror on his friend's face and gulped before asking, "What is it, Harry?"
"Damn it, Ron; the note!" he said as he tore up the stairs to get to their room.
When they got there, Harry rummaged through Ron's school bag like a madman. "Harry, what the hell are you doing? You're making me really nervous."
"Don't you get it, Ron? The note, the note, Ron." Finally finding it between two pages of the Transfiguration text, Harry held it aloft for Ron to see. "Ron, don't you find it weird that we, you and I, Hogwarts' most eager pair of students, and Malfoy's worst enemies, happened to find a note tipping us off about his so-called plan inside your Transfiguration text, when you hadn't taken it out all day for the past three days because you didn't need to, and yet someone managed to slip it in there, anyway? A note tipping us off about Malfoy's plan would definitely get us up there faster than we can say 'ferret face'. Now who do you know that wants us--or let's say, me--upstairs in a dark tower in the middle of the night, Ron?" The look of horror on Ron's face could not compare to the horror he was feeling.
Ron's heartbeat, increasing by the second and pounding furiously against his chest was drumming in his ears. "Harry, as creepy as that sounds," he gulped, "you're missing the point here. The note wasn't in your Transfiguration text. It was in mine."
"All the more brilliant, you see," Harry exclaimed. "If I found the note in my textbook, I certainly would have been suspicious, but because we found it in yours, we didn't even bother to think twice, and whoever put it in there had to be bloody confident you were going to tell me." Ron's face had turned a ghastly white.
"Oh shit, Harry, you don't think..."
"Voldemort," Harry whispered. Ron winced and looked up to see Harry's face turn slightly pale. "Ron –"
" - Hermione."
Hermione carefully and quietly turned the doorknob, opening the door slightly. The passageway was dark and completely silent. Her heart was racing and her palms, sweaty. She flung the door open and stepped out with her wand aloft. To her surprise, she was alone.
'What the hell?' she thought to herself. She thought it wise to keep quiet, her hood still over her head concealing most of her face. She looked around, but no one was to be found. There was the faint sound of footsteps, and she quickly turned around to see something moving. However, but it wasn't moving towards her--it was moving away from her. She followed the figure quietly about a good 15 paces behind. 'What the hell is Malfoy playing at?' she thought. 'And where the hell is he going?' He was walking up toward the top of the tower. She followed him for 15 minutes, and when she saw the hooded Malfoy stop at an old broom closet and walk inside, she thought she had him cornered.
'He's probably hiding the fireworks in there,' she thought. So she steadied herself, and holding her wand out, she flung the closet door open with a simple swish. To her surprise again, there was no one. Nothing. Not a damn thing, except for a broom. An old beat-up broom swathed in cobwebs and dust. Hermione would have thought that no one had entered the empty closet in probably decades from the looks of the broom, except for the fact that the broom closet was nowhere as filthy as the broom. The room actually looked as if it was cleaned just a week ago, despite a few specks of dust here and there. Hermione was feeling very nervous now.
'Where the hell is Malfoy?' Hermione turned to dash out and run downstairs to get as far away as possible from the tower, when she noticed that the broom was propped on something. It looked as if it were leaning against the wall, but when she looked closer; the broom wasn't leaning on it at all. It was propped on some sort of lump on the wall. "Lumos." Hermione risked a bit of light to take a closer look at the broom and the wall, and she noticed that the lump was actually a knob. There was a small door, no higher than her waist, concealed behind the broom.
Hermione cleared away some of the cobwebs between the broom and the door, and moved to grab the knob. Her finger slid over the broom handle. She felt as if something heavy had hooked her behind the navel and pulled her up. She felt dizzy, and was suddenly in a spinning wisp of smoke and colors, making her feel nauseated, until she landed with a loud thud. Hermione shook her head. Taking a second to collect her thoughts and register what had just happened, she realized that she was hunched over, her hands and feet touching the floor, and her knees bent and wobbly. She always felt queasy when she traveled by Portkey, and was never too good on the landing. Her eyes were still closed, but her thoughts began to come back quickly, with a vengeance. Slowly opening her eyes, Hermione soon realized that she was not alone.
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