- CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR -
Overheard Conversations

Harry woke up with a horrible feeling he was suffocating, and very nearly threw the sheet off of his head before he realised that it was, in fact, his Invisibility Cloak. He was still in the Slytherin common room. Which was no longer empty, it being just about breakfast time.

Snape was right - he really was an idiot! How could he have fallen asleep? The constant nightmares, the struggle to keep up with his studies when his magic was failing him, and spending every spare minute obsessing over the clues was stretching him to the limit. Harry was beginning to wonder if, in previous years, he hadn't been drawing on his own natural magic to keep him going without realising it. If young witches and wizards got themselves out of trouble with wild bursts of magic, perhaps those who were trained to control it still used it unconsciously in more subtle ways. The drain on their magic could be crippling them all in more ways than they knew.

He slid out of the seat in a mad panic, knowing it was probably only the collective hunger of the school's Slytherin population that had saved him from being sat on. He had to get out! At least there were plenty of people coming and going - he just had to make it to the door without being caught and skinned alive.

He took an elbow to the stomach from a burly seventh-year, who fortunately wasn't awake enough to realise he'd struck someone invisible. Harry had to perform a kind of random ballet as people kept walking through whatever piece of space he was trying to store his body in. He glimpsed Malfoy coming into the common room, and grimaced. That was all he needed.

"Yah!" Somebody stepped on the corner of his invisibility cloak, and nearly yanked it right off him. Harry hunched against the floor as Malfoy narrowed his eyes in his direction, as if he'd perhaps caught a flash of movement. A heavy boot slammed into Harry's side, and he was nearly bowled over.

"Someone's in here!" said Malfoy. "It's Potter in his Invisibility Cloak! Find him, Crabbe."

Harry squirmed away from the henchman's aimless groping. Fortunately, the rest of the room were too confused to join the search.

"What's happening?" was the mumble on most sleepy lips.

Harry ducked behind a cluster of girls. "Malfoy's paranoid," he said, in his best Slytherin drawl, and moved on before anyone could turn around to see who'd spoken.

"Hey, Malfoy, seeing things again?" heckled somebody from the other side of the room.

"No wonder he can't catch a Snitch!"

Harry snorted in amusement, and the girl to the side of him whirled around. "Hey-" she began, registering the voice out of empty air. He hurried on.

Crabbe was blocking the way out. "Watch it, you oaf," Harry said, in the closest approximation he could make to Ferus's tone, and wriggled past while he was blinking in confusion. A second-year girl was opening the main door just as Harry reached it, and he made a dive for freedom.

He shared both the new clue and the story of his narrow escape with the others over breakfast. "We have to get working on this one right away," he said. "Malfoy suspects I was in there, so if whoever's behind it has put together that the clues always appear in common rooms, they'll know we've got it."

"I don't like the look of that last bit," said Ron. "Words that Salazar Slytherin held dear? How are we supposed to know those?"

"Maybe it'll be multiple choice," said Harry optimistically. "It might be another wall like the Ravenclaw one, where have to pick out words like 'pureblood'."

"Do we need the moonstone again?" Ron wondered. "It says 'the moon will guide you true'."

"I don't think so," said Hermione. "After all, why repeat a part of the puzzle that we've already solved before? Anyway, the first two lines always pertain to the item itself, rather than how to find it."

"Oh. So once we've got the Slytherin item, we have to use it on a moonlit night or something."

"Probably." Hermione started gathering up her stuff, looking apologetic. "Listen, I've got to go now, I've got Arithmancy first thing."

"And then we've all got Charms," said Ron.

"And then me and Hermione have both got double Potions," Harry groaned. "We can meet up after lunch, I suppose - I have to go to the library and get my Charms essay done now."

Hermione paused in the act of charging off to class. "Oh, Harry, haven't you done that yet?" she asked in exasperation.

"Nearly!" he defended himself.

Ron leaned over as she left the Hall. "Nearly started, you mean?" he guessed.

"Yeah."

"Me too. Come on, let's get to the library."

They gathered again after lunch was over, and hunched together over Harry's scribbled copy of the clue. "'Seek out the centaur's'- is that a U?"

"It's an E."

"Well, that makes more sense. 'Seek out the centaur's better half, between the red and blue'," Hermione read.

"What's the better half of a centaur?"

"The front half," said Ron.

"Ron." She gave him a look. He shrugged.

"Well, half a centaur... that would be just a man, wouldn't it?"

"A horse," Harry corrected.

"The horse is the better half?" Ron said sceptically.

"The centaurs would think so," he said, uncomfortably remembering the fountain in the Ministry of Magic. No real centaur would gaze up at a witch and wizard with anything like the awe and adoration depicted in the statues.

"Harry's right," interjected Hermione. "The centaurs officially asked to be reclassified as beasts, don't you remember? They'd rather be grouped with horses than beings, as long as vampires and hags and things are included. So we have to look for a horse somewhere in Hogwarts. Maybe a painting? 'Between the red and blue'..."

"Gryffindor and Ravenclaw?" Harry suggested.

"It's somewhere to start. Harry, you go up towards the Ravenclaw quarters, and start walking back from there to Gryffindor Tower. Ron and I will start from the opposite end, and we'll all look out for anything that looks like a horse."

"All right. I'll meet you in the middle," he agreed.

Harry's luck being what it was, he ran into Snape within a few corridors of the Ravenclaw entrance. The Potions master had cornered the Ravenclaw boy he and the others had rescued on the train.

"Mr. Dolorus, I will not tolerate unprovoked attacks on my students," Harry heard him say acidly. "Make no mistake, another incident like this and you will be explaining yourself to the Headmaster."

Harry gave Dolorus a commiserating smile as he hurried away from the hopelessly biased Head of Slytherin, but the boy just brushed past him with a barely concealed scowl. Snape turned his attention to Harry.

"Ah, the wandering Mr. Potter," he sneered. "Tell me, Potter, what possible business you could have in this part of the castle?"

"None, sir," he said brightly. "I'm just on my way back to Gryffindor Tower."

Snape narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "'Back' implies that you went somewhere in the first place. Where?"

"Just walking, Professor," he said innocently. "It helps me think."

He raised an eyebrow archly. "Far be it from me to interfere in that unlikely process. Get back, Potter, before I take points for your wilful disobedience of the Headmaster's instructions not to wander the halls alone."

"Yes, sir. Professor," he asked as a sudden afterthought, "was there some kind of particular saying or motto that Salazar Slytherin was famous for?"

Snape gave him an unreadable look. "Salazar Slytherin was famous for many things, Potter," he said sharply. "Not least of which was having the sense not to blurt house secrets out to any fool who asked. Begone."

He took the hint, and hurried away.

Harry had been traipsing through passages and up and down stairways for quite some time without finding the slightest hint of anything horsy, when he heard voices coming from an alcove up ahead. Extremely familiar voices, actually.

"I am not jealous of Harry!" Ron said emphatically. Harry abruptly abandoned all plans to make his presence known; it would be embarrassing all round if he stepped in now. The polite thing to do would probably be to go back and walk around in circles for a while, and hope the conversation had moved on before he came back.

Of course, if he did that, he wouldn't be able to eavesdrop.

"Look, Ron, I'm just worried about him, that's all," Hermione said. "He's under a lot of pressure right now, and I know you've been... needing time to yourself lately, what with everything, and so I just want to stick close to him when you're not there."

"What's that got to do with anything?" Ron demanded cluelessly. Irritation, affection and amusement tussled for supremacy as Harry listened his friends talking at cross-purposes.

Hermione sighed. "Look, Ron, all I'm saying is I don't fancy Harry or anything."

"I never said you did!" Ron's voice had gone very high all of a sudden. "You just- first you say I'm jealous, and then you start coming out with all this stuff that's got nothing to do with anything anyway-"

Amusement won. Harry decided that now was a good time to step in.

"Well, it's nice to know I'm so completely unfanciable," he said jovially, rounding the corner. Hermione went pink.

"Harry!" she squeaked. "Oh! I didn't mean-"

He laughed. "It's all right, Hermione. If it makes you feel better, I don't fancy you either." Not that she wasn't very pretty, but they were friends over and above the possibility of anything else. And then, of course, there was Ron. "What about you, Ron?" he added, rather wickedly.

His best friend froze like a deer in the headlights. Harry let him squirm for a moment, then kindly rescued him.

"You don't fancy me, do you?"

"No!" he blurted, with so much relief that Harry had to chuckle again. Hermione fake-sighed and slapped her forehead.

"Well, now you've gone and ruined my plan to set the two of you up over the summer."

Harry grinned, and looked around, realising for the first time that they were sharing the alcove with a sizeable statue. "Hey, is this the horse we're looking for?"

"It's the only one we've seen," said Ron, still rather red around the edges.

"What do we do next?" Harry wondered, reaching for the scribbled poem.

Hermione recited the verse from memory. "'Look neither forward nor behind to travel where you would; traverse the path not shown and find a crowd there silent stood'."

"How are we supposed to find it if it's not shown?" Ron wondered. Harry shrugged.

They tried various different ways of following the poem's advice: walking sideways, walking with their eyes closed... It didn't gain them anything, other than a number of bruises.

"Maybe we have to ride the horse," Ron suggested, trying to climbing up on its back. The statue bucked him off immediately, tossing its head irritably, and he sat down, rather dazed.

"You okay, Ron?" Harry checked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah..." he said vaguely. Hermione held her hand in front of his eyes.

"Ron, how many fingers am I holding up?"

"Snakes," said Ron.

Hermione looked worried. "Er-"

He batted her hand aside. "On the ceiling! Look at the ceiling."

They looked. It was indeed covered in a mass of carved snakes, their bodies passing over and under and around each other. "Wow, that's... making me kind of dizzy," Harry admitted, after a moment.

"'Neither forward nor behind'," Hermione breathed, beginning to smile. "Of course! We have to follow the snakes."

"How?" demanded Ron. "And which one? There must be about fifty up there."

"Look at the tails," said Harry. "There's four of them that start here in this alcove above the horse, so it must be one of those."

"But which one?" he repeated.

"Well, let's each pick our own snake and follow it," Hermione said sensibly. "I'll take the one with the diamond pattern."

With much stumbling, starting over and walking into each other, they traced the lengths of their respective snakes through the mass of serpents depicted. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that the carvings tended to squirm a bit, and wriggled out of the way indignantly if you tried to mark the ceiling with any kind of spell.

Eventually they fetched up in a semi-circular hallway with five doors. Unfortunately, all three paths had ended at different doors.

"Well, that didn't help!" said Ron.

"Yes it did," said Hermione. "'The path not shown' - stay here!" She ran back towards the alcove with the horse. Harry leaned back against his doorway and exchanged a shrug with Ron.

A short while later Hermione returned, eyes fixed on the ceiling as she walked. Harry put out a hand to steady her as she nearly walked smack into the wall. "Watch it, Hermione."

"Oh, sorry." She took a final jump forward, and ended up at the middle door. Harry and Ron were standing in front of two of the others; she pointed her wand at the last remaining door that none of them had reached, the rightmost. "It has to be that door. All the others have snakes leading to them, but that one's the only path that's not shown."

"Brilliant!" said Ron admiringly. They scrambled through the doorway.

The 'crowd' part of the clue was readily apparent. Arranged in two rows facing the door were eight statues of witches and wizards, each with their hands held out in front of them, as if they were holding an invisible load. They alternated male and female, and none of them had any kind of identifying marks or inscriptions.

Harry had a very bad feeling about this.

"What's the next part of the clue, Harry?" Ron asked.

He found his sheet of paper. "'Take hands that hold the pages fast'..." He trailed off.

"None of this lot are holding anything," Ron said, which Harry had already noticed.

"Maybe we're supposed to know who they are..." Hermione said doubtfully.

"Well if you don't, none of us will," he pointed out.

Hermione stepped towards the statue just to the right of the door, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a very bushy beard. "Excuse me, sir, can you tell us anything about yourself?" she asked politely.

The statue didn't move on its plinth or appear to register her presence, but a deep, pleasant baritone voice rang out from it. "A member of house Hufflepuff is leftmost of a four. You will not find a Ravenclaw adjacent to the door."

The statue fell silent. Ron turned around and thumped his head against the doorframe, hard. "Great," he said. "More rhyming clues - that's exactly what we need. Trust the bloody Slytherins."

Harry could only groan in agreement.