Chapter 20:
Feeling shocked at Cho's sudden breakdown, Harry knelt next to her and said urgently, "Cho! What's wrong?"
"I d-don't know w-w-what I was th-thinking!"
"Shhâ€it's okay," said Harry, desperately trying to calm her down. Cho continued to sob uncontrollably for a few minutes, and Harry thought it best to just wait. When she had calmed down a bit, she looked up at him and said again,
"What have I done?"
"I-er-don't know, Choâ€will you tell me?"
"I-I" she trailed off and began to cry again, her face in her knees.
Harry sighed and slumped to a sitting position. He sat there quietly until Cho could look up again; when she did, however, she let out a kind of muffled moan and leapt to her feet, running away down the corridor.
"What-CHO! Where're you going? CHO!" Harry shouted after her as he scrambled to his feet.
Cho didn't look back and disappeared around the corner. Harry cursed under his breath and muttered, "Women" as he walked thoughtfully back to Gryffindor Tower.
Slowly making his way back up to the common room and lost in thought, Harry wasn't really looking where he was going. He snapped back to his senses, however, when he ran into Draco Malfoy.
"Watch where you're going, Potter," snarled Malfoy.
"Sorry," mumbled Harry, thinking that he didn't like the smirk on Malfoy's face at all.
As Harry continued down the hall, his thoughts began to turn to what Malfoy was up to. Malfoy, like Snape, was always happy if someone else wasn't.
Giving the password to the portrait, Harry climbed into the common room to find Ron leaning over his homework again, watched like a hawk by Hermione.
Harry sighed. "So you caught us, eh, Hermione?"
Hermione looked up and glared at Harry. "You, too! Ron said you were just up in your dormitory!" She turned now to glare menacingly at Ron.
"What?" he said, trying to sound innocent but failing miserably, "You could have gone up there to check!"
"I thought if I left you'd sneak out again, Ron! It's the kind of think you'd do, you know!"
"Well then I- Hey!" said Ron, suddenly realizing what she'd said. "You don't trust me at all, do you?"
"No, I don't," said Hermione in a I'm-right-and-that's-final kind of tone. She folded her arms and turned away from him to face Harry.
"I shouldn't trust you, either-" she began.
"Don't start in, please," Harry moaned as he seated himself near the two.
"What's wrong?" said Hermione urgently, as she saw Harry's expression.
"I met up with Cho in the corridor-"
The portrait hole opened and Neville climbed in. "I've lost Trevor again, have any of you seen him?" he said miserably.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione glanced at each other with raised eyebrows, and shook their heads.
"Nope, sorry Neville," said Harry.
Neville sighed. "I can't remember anything. I hate being stupid."
Hermione looked extremely pained by this.
Neville sat heavily on a chair. "So, anyone want to play Wizard's Chess?"
Ron eagerly shoved his books off of the table and exclaimed, "I will!"
"Oh, no you won't, Ron! You and Harry have to finish your work!"
"Aw, come on Hermione! Give them a break!" Neville nagged.
Harry and Ron beamed at him. Hermione scowled and finally gave in. She watched as Neville and Harry played, then Harry and Ron, then Ron and Neville. Even Hermione was laughing at the expression on Ron's face when Neville beat him.
"Hey, Hermione," said Harry slowly as he watched Ron and Neville's re-match. "Where's Naomi?"
"She was flying on her broomstick outside. We should go get her."
Hermione looked meaningfully at Harry. The two got up and left, saying hurried good-byes to Neville and Ron (who didn't hear them at all), and made their way down to the entrance hall.
"So what happened with Cho?" Hermione asked. Clearly she thought that Harry and Cho had simply gotten in a fight again.
"No, it's not what you think. We apologized to each other; we weren't fighting."
"But what else could have happened besides that?" They were now outside, scanning the sky for any signs of Naomi on her broom as they talked and strolled around the lake.
"We were talking, and she seemed upset the whole time. It was so weird, she randomly just-"
Harry jumped as he felt something speed past him from behind. Ducking down, he looked up and saw Naomi come to a graceful landing a little bit ahead of Harry and Hermione.
"Hey," she called as she hopped off and hurried over to them, pushing her windswept hair out of her face.
"Hi," said Hermione in a distracted way. "So what happened that was really weird?" she inquired, turning to Harry.
Naomi looked from Hermione to Harry. "What's up?" she said to Harry.
"Somethingâ€I don't exactly know what"
"Well, tell us about it," Naomi prompted as she lay down her broom and seated herself on the ground.
Harry threw himself down next to her and described what had happened earlier in the corridor. He made sure to include his run-in with Malfoy.
As Harry explained it out loud, it all seemed to make more sense. "I think Malfoy did something to her," he said immediately when he had finished telling his story. "But he'll never admit it. Shall we use the Polyjuice Potion again?"
Hermione was quick to shoot down Harry's idea. "No, Harry! We don't know for sure that it was Malfoy, first of all. Second of all, we can't risk the potion again! We could never get past Snape this year. He's absolutely been dying for a reason to get you thrown out of his class-or expelled. We don't want him to get that chance. There must be something else we can do" She lapsed into thoughtful silence.
"Erâ€okay--never mind, then," said Harry, surprised at her long speech and sudden end to it. "Naomi? Any ideas?"
"I've got nothing," she muttered with a shrug.
For what seemed to Harry to be at least an hour they sat and thought, not speaking to each other. But soon enough Harry's head was starting to ache from so much being crammed into it lately, and all he wanted to do was lie in bed for another year or so.
Hermione sighed, and that seemed to snap all of them out of their reveries. The sun was beginning to go down, and the sky was getting darker.
"Harry," said Naomi slowly, "Did you ever finish that homework?"
Harry jumped and felt himself go red. "Oops," he muttered, scrambling to his feet and trying not to meet Hermione's venomous stare. He ran up to the castle doors, ignoring the scolding tones of Hermione's 'homework' speech, and found the entrance hall beginning to flood with students waiting to eat dinner. Having to fight against the flow of the crowd, it took longer than he would have hoped to get back to the common room. Not feeling hungry at all, he quickly sat at a table near the fire and pulled his books from his bag, which he had left on the floor. Harry sighed as he loaded his quill with ink. It was going to be a long night.

×××××

Ron, as it turned out, had slipped downstairs to eat before returning to the fireside to finish his homework. Together he and Harry worked late into the night, occasionally helping each other out-mostly when one had to wake the other after he fell asleep on his homework.
Eventually, neither of them could keep their eyes awake any longer, so they trudged up to bed and collapsed onto their covers. Harry had suggested that they wake up early to finish, but by the next morning he was thinking that he should have known better.
Harry was in Snape's dungeon, trying to explain why his homework wasn't done, babbling on and feeling his stomach wriggle as Snape's lip curled. The sinister look could only mean bad news for Harry. Snape opened his mouth and Harry waited for his sentence to fall.
"ARGH!"
Harry spun around, wondering who had yelled. Then he felt cold liquid all over his face as Snape threw a dark, shimmering potion on him...Harry yelled and jumped up, only to find himself tangled in his bedding on the floor. Hermione was standing over him, holding the silver pitcher from beneath the window. Harry's gaze fell onto a very disgruntled-looking Ron, whose soggy hair was plastered to his head.
"Hermione!" cried Harry. "What was that for?!"
"For sleeping through breakfast. Have you finished that-"
"NO, okay?" snapped Ron. "We'll have to do it between classes or during lunch or something"
"Better hurry, our first class is in ten minutes!"
Harry and Ron exchanged mortified looks and scurried around to get ready. With all the confusion going on, it didn't occur to Harry that Cho has slipped his mind completely.

Harry was finding his schedule do be surprisingly busy, considering the fact that he didn't have any major tests like the O.W.L's or N.E.W.T's to prepare for. But still, between Quidditch, writing letters to Shadow and Dawn, and his normal homework and classes, he found that he had very little time on his hands. By the time the week of Halloween rolled around, Harry found himself looking forward to having fun at the feast.
At Monday's breakfast, the first thing Harry noticed was the ceiling of the Great Hall. Gray clouds were starting to form in the sky today. As he sat down with Ron and Hermione, Harry looked up at the faculty table. Dumbledore was not there. In fact, Harry hadn't seen him all weekend.
Professor McGonagall made the announcements, which included a reminder that the feast would be on Thursday. Hermione looked a bit grave when she heard the reminder.
"What? Do you not like feasts or something?" asked Harry. Not that he cared very much. He was not in a good mood at all. And his scar was prickling more than usual. Which probably had something to do with his bad mood.
"Oh, no, this doesn't have anything to do with spew, does it?" Ron said, rolling his eyes.
"No, Ron," snapped Hermione. "I'm just not looking forward to dealing with what some students might do as pranks on Halloween. Trying to follow in Fred and George's footsteps," she added with disgust. "You should be thinking about that as well, Ron as you are going to help keep them in line."
Ron's eyes widened and he set down his spoon. "Me? Why, you think I'd be any help with that?"
"Well, now that you mention it, no." Hermione smirked as Ron frowned. "But since you're a prefect, it's your responsibility."
Ron scowled. "I hate this job."
Harry snorted.
"What?" asked Ron.
"It's just that-" Harry paused, stabbing his fork into a pancake. "You never really do anything for your 'job'."
"So? I can't help it if I'm no good at this. Not my fault Dumbledore was nutty enough to make me prefect."
Hermione glared at him. "But since he was nutty enough to, you have a responsibility!"
"And?" Ron looked at Hermione, waiting for the rest of it.
"Ron! You have to do your part!" Cried Hermione. "You're so irresponsible! You always depend on me to take notes for you, check your homework for you, get you to study so you don't fail your classes, even get you out of trouble-the least you can do is help out a little bit for just this one night!"
Ron and Hermione continued their argument, until their bickering was making Harry's head hurt.
"Would you two just shut up for once?!" He said loudly.
Ron and Hermione stopped and stared at Harry, both looking as though they had just remembered he was there.
"Sorry," said Hermione, giving Ron a stern look to silence him as he opened his mouth. She was looking at Harry with a little bit of concern drawn on her face. "You okay?"
Harry looked up, realizing that he had been rubbing his forehead with a pained look on his face. "Yeah," he muttered. "Headache."
Harry glanced around the Great Hall, noticing that it was quieter than usual. Many students were staring at him, and he realized his sudden outburst had been louder than he had thought. Judging by the looks he was getting, some people still believed him to be insane.
With a grudging glance toward the Slytherin table, Harry saw Pansy Parkinson stand up and storm out of the Great Hall. Just as she was exiting through the doors, Naomi was coming in. Naomi stepped aside to let Pansy pass, and looked over at Harry with raised eyebrows. With one last glance at Pansy, Naomi started towards the Gryffindor table, shaking her head in a bewildered way. She seated herself next to Hermione, dropping her bag underneath the table.
"That was weird," she said, grabbing a piece of toast. "Has the post come yet?"
A great rustling noise arose and hundreds of owls flooded into the room. After the few moments of confusion had died down, Ron looked at Naomi and said, "Yes."
Naomi rolled her eyes and took a bite of toast, reading the letter that she had received. Harry, Hermione, and Ron seemed to have reached a silent agreement not to mention the conflict from minutes before. Harry borrowed Seamus' copy of the Daily Prophet and opened it up. He took a sip of orange juice and looked down at the front page.
Harry spit out the orange juice he had just sipped; it spewed across the table and all over the newspaper, tablecloth, and some of the food. Most unfortunately, Professor McGonagall had been walking by the table at just that moment. Harry watched in embarrassment as McGonagall very slowly took her glasses off, pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket, and mopped the orange juice off of her face. She wiped her glasses clean, placed them back on her face and looked down at Harry, whose face was by now burning.
Hermione and Naomi were staring in shock from Harry to McGonagall, but Ron was looking at his plate, shaking with silent laughter.
"P-Professor, I-"
"It would be appreciated, Potter," said McGonagall dryly, "If you would try to keep your food in your mouth from now on."
The entire Great Hall was staring, and a few people were whispering and snickering. Harry wanted so badly to sink down in his chair and disappear under the table as he saw Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle pointing and laughing openly. Ron was still staring at his plate, apparently afraid he would not be able to control his laughter if he looked at McGonagall.
"Come with me, Potter," said McGonagall. Harry slowly picked up his bag and stood up. He glanced at Naomi, Hermione, and Ron-who had now looked up-and saw the same expression on each of their faces. Was he going to get in trouble for that? Harry looked meaningfully at the orange-splattered Daily Prophet before turning and dragging his feet after McGonagall. As he reached the doors of the Great Hall, he glanced back and saw the three of them crowding around the newspaper to see what had made Harry spit out his juice.
As they entered the entrance hall and started up the stairs, McGonagall glanced back to make sure the Great Hall was babbling with noise again, then glanced at Harry.
"Don't look so horrified, boy!" She said. "You're not in trouble!"
"I'm not?" Harry asked. He noticed a few of the portraits staring at them.
"No! That was actually rather amusing. The timing was so peculiar, that you would see that article the moment I came to fetch you."
"You were going to take me out here anyway?" asked Harry, shocked at his luck.
"Yes." McGonagall suddenly became dead serious. "Come on, to my office. We'll talk there."
They continued up the stairs and Harry realized that of course this had to be more important that spewed orange juice. A man in a feathered cap whispered from his portrait as Harry walked by, "Lucky she didn't give you detention for a month!"
He was thinking hard about what the professor had said when he noticed somethingthat you would see that article the moment I came to fetch you�
"This has something to do with the article in the Daily Prophet, doesn't it?"
"Shh! We will talk in my office, Potter. Not here!"
Harry said nothing else as they made their way down the corridors. He was thinking about that newspaper article. He had only seen the headline and picture, which he now was concentrating on in his head:

Fudge Being Impeached?

And a large picture of the Minister was plastered beneath the article, looking shifty and highly uncomfortable.