Due to their increasing unpopularity in Gryffindor Tower, Harry and Ron were spending more time than ever away from their fellow house mates. More often than not they returned back to Gryffindor Tower as near to the curfew as possible. They then either went to bed for an early night, or found a quiet corner of the common room to relax in. On the same evening that Hermione had slipped into Gryffindor Tower, the pair had chosen to settle down in the common room, and were among the last two people still in the room.
"I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick of this," Ron sighed.
"What, being the school pariah?" Harry snorted.
"I think Parkinson's got that one covered," Ron retorted. "Not that she doesn't deserve it, the evil little cow."
"You think she's evil for trying again to manage what we failed to do?" Harry asked.
"I can't blame her for trying to kill Hermione," Ron replied with a shrug. "I just mean she's an evil little cow in general."
"Maybe," Harry shrugged absent-mindedly as a thought entered his head.
"What's wrong?" Ron asked.
"I've just had a thought," Harry whispered, lowering his voice even though the only other people in the common room were younger students, and even they were settled across the other side of the room. "It's no secret that Parkinson is being ostracised because of the cursed bracelet. What if our recent 'accidents' are because of the poisoning incident."
"That would make sense if it were the Slytherins behind what's being happening. But these incidents have all been with other Gryffindors." Ron argued.
"What do you think the Gryffindors would do if they found out we'd tried to kill Hermione?" Harry hissed in a low voice. "The Slytherins might be happy to play mind-games with Parkinson, but us Gryffindors are more direct."
"But why would the Gryffindors know about the poisoning and not the Slytherins?" Ron questioned with a frown. "Even if Parkinson had told someone, it would have been a Slytherin."
"I doubt any of the Slytherins would have listened to her," Harry argued. "You've seen the way they treat her, it's as though she no longer exists. But I could just imagine one of the Gryffindors making fun of her and she retaliated by telling them about our part in the first attempt to kill Hermione."
"So what, our friends are trying to kill us in return?" Ron snorted.
"I don't think anyone is trying to kill us Ron," Harry said carefully, remembering the allegations Ron had thrown around in the direct aftermath of their trip down the stairs. "Yes, we could have been seriously hurt by falling down the stairs, but we would have been unlucky. Maybe we were just supposed to get a scare. And those vampire ants were awful, but again we were never in any real danger."
"You're right," Ron said slowly, warming up to Harry's idea. "Our friends are out to humiliate us."
"It looks that way," Harry said. "But let's think ourselves lucky Hermione doesn't know about our part in her poisoning."
"She'd kill us for sure," Ron agreed with a shiver. "She's demonic, and far more evil than Parkinson. But what about the others? How do we stop them from carrying on with their schemes?"
"We need to talk to them," Harry decided. "We need to sit them down and make them see our side of things."
"Do you really think that will work?" Ron asked. "Just look at how they've been reacting. How are we going to make them see why we did what we did?"
"No-one said it was going to be easy," Harry retorted with a shrug. "Let's sleep on it and come up with a plan tomorrow. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for bed."
"Yeah, lets go up," Ron agreed as the pair got to their feet.
Fortunately when they got up to the boys dorms, the others were already in bed so they didn't have to face their hostility. Not wanting to wake their room mates, the pair used the bathroom and got ready for bed as quietly as they could. They then both hopped into their respective beds and whispered good night to each other.
Ten minutes later, Harry was on the verge of drifting off into a sound sleep when a moan from Ron disturbed him. Thinking his best friend had already drifted off to sleep and was about to have a nightmare, Harry groped on his bedside table for his wand and glasses. However, before he could light up his wand to see what was wrong with Ron, his best friend let out a blood curdling scream.
"Lumos," he cried, lighting up his wand and jumping out of bed. "Ron, what's wrong?"
"Get it off me. Get it off me," Ron squealed in a high pitched voice, visibly shaking in the bed.
By the time Harry moved over to Ron's bed and yanked back the covers, the other three boys had woken up and asked what the problem was. However, once the covers on Ron's bed were back, the problem was visible for everyone to see. A large black spider was crawling over Ron's shaking legs. At the sight of the actual spider, Ron began to scream at the top of his lungs and harsh sobs poured out of him.
"Save me," he begged Harry.
"Calm down Ron, it won't hurt you," Dean said, forgetting their recent problems in the face of Ron's obvious distress.
"Get it off me," Ron sobbed, his whole body shaking with fear.
"Okay, we'll get it off you," Harry soothed. "The second we move the spider, jump out of bed as fast as you can."
Getting everyone at the side of the bed nearest the door, Harry bravely stepped forward and poked at the spider with his wand. He was tempted to use magic on the creature, but he suspected it was one of the spiders from the forbidden forest and he was unsure of using magic on it in case it reacted and hurt Ron in any way. So instead Harry settled for using his wand to physically push the spider off his best friend.
The second the spider was no longer on him, Ron shot from the bed with a loud cry. However, as he did so the mattress bounced with the force of which he'd jumped off and the large spider fell off the bed and onto the floor.
"Where is it?" Seamus asked, looking around in panic. While he wasn't terrified of spiders the way Ron was, he didn't fact sleeping in the same room as such a large creature.
"It's loose. It's loose. Let me out of here," Ron cried, pushing past Neville and bolting from the room still screaming loud enough to wake the rest of Gryffindor Tower.
Also not wanting to stick around with a spider in residence, the other boys followed Ron from the room, although Harry had the sense to close the door behind them so the spider didn't escape into the rest of the tower. By the time they reached the common room, other students were up and a hysterical Ron was yelling about the terror he'd endured.
"I'll never sleep in that room again," he declared with a shudder.
"But how did such a big spider get into the castle?" Ginny mused. Like the rest of the tower, she'd been awoken by her brother's screams and was down in the common room with everyone else.
"Yeah, you see smaller spiders around, but the big ones don't venture out of the forest," Harry agreed.
"So how did one end up in my bed?" Ron whispered, his eyes widening as he recalled what he and Harry had been talking before bed. "Which one of you did it?" he demanded harshly, glaring between his friends. "Which one of you bastards did this?"
"No-one did this Ron," Ginny said. "It's strange to find a large spider in the castle, but it hasn't been deliberately placed there."
"What do you think, someone crept into our dorms while we were all out?" Dean snorted in derision.
"Someone placed that monster in my bed, and I'm not going to rest until I find out who did it," Ron spat, glaring angrily at everyone but Harry and his sister.
"If you're going to start accusing people of things again, I'm going to fetch Professor McGonagall," Neville said quietly.
"Yeah, we need someone to catch that damn spider," Seamus agreed.
"Go get McGonagall," Ron said to Neville. "She can prove which one of you did this to me."
Even though no-one but Ron, and possibly Harry, believed that the spider had been placed in Ron's bed deliberately, McGonagall was still sent for. When the head of Gryffindor arrived, she was wearing her tartan dressing gown and did not look at all impressed to be dragged from her bed. She was even less impressed when Ron started trying to blame the incident on one of his fellow Gryffindors.
"That is enough," she ordered sharply, calling for silence. "I will give everyone one chance to be honest with me. If someone did place the spider in Ron's bed, say as a prank, now is their chance to come clean. It is also your chance to speak up if you've seen anything suspicious."
Slowly McGonagall's stern gaze travelled over the gathered students. After so many years of teaching she knew a guilty face when she saw one. However, none of her Gryffindors looked guilty. That was until she turned towards Lavender and Parvati and caught the two girls exchanging furtive glances.
"Miss Brown, Miss Patil, do you have something you want to share?" McGonagall asked the two girls.
"It may be nothing," Parvati began hesitantly. "In fact, I'm sure it's nothing. But Lavender and I saw someone heading up to the boys dorms earlier."
"Someone who doesn't sleep in the room?" McGonagall asked.
"Yes," Parvati answered with a whisper.
"Who?" Ron demanded.
"Ginny," Lavender replied, not sounding quite as hesitant as her best friend to drop the red-headed witch in it.
"What?" Ginny spluttered as all eyes turned to her. "I've never been anywhere near the boys dorms. And even if I had been, I wouldn't have placed a spider in my brother's bed. Whoever Parvati and Lavender saw, it wasn't me."
"We know what we saw," Lavender insisted. "You even spoke to us."
"I'm telling you, it wasn't me," Ginny insisted.
"Just like it wasn't Mr Longbottom who spilled the vampire ants," McGonagall whispered almost to herself. "And it wasn't Mr Thomas and Mr Finnigan in the owlery."
"What are you saying, Professor?" Harry asked, hearing everything the Transfiguration Professor had been saying.
"I'm saying that not everything in our world is as it first seems," McGonagall said, speaking in her normal tone of voice. "And sometimes people aren't who they appear to be."
"Polyjuice Potion," Harry hissed, sharing a stunned look with Ron as they both mentally kicked themselves over how stupid they'd been. All this time they'd been jumping to the worst conclusions about their friends, when what they should have been doing was thinking about who hated them enough to be putting them through such misery.
"I don't want anyone jumping to conclusions," McGonagall cautioned. "But rest assured, this incident and the previous two are going to be well and truly investigated. Now, I am going to go and catch that spider, then I want everyone to go to bed."
Once the spider was captured in a large glass jar, McGonagall made sure everyone had returned to bed before she left Gryffindor Tower. But instead of going back to her own rooms, or even setting the spider free, she took the spider to the headmaster's office and knocked on the door to Dumbledore's private living quarters. Dumbledore was rather surprised to find McGonagall at her door, but he was even more surprised to hear what she had to say.
"So you're saying that these incidents are the work of Miss Granger," Dumbledore said, voicing the theory that his deputy head hadn't quite vocalised.
"I think it's more likely than Harry and Ron's friends turning on them," McGonagall said.
"Proving it could be hard," Dumbledore mused.
"It might not be if we caught her by surprise," McGonagall replied. "If she's been using polyjuice potion, she'll have a supply. And a supply of hair. Maybe a late night search of her dorm room will reveal something."
"I like the way you think, Minerva," Dumbledore chuckled. "I'll rouse Kingsley and I think we'll take a trip to the dungeons. It's time we proved once and for all what a trouble maker Miss Granger is. You never know, if we can catch her out the Minister might allow us to finally get rid of her."
"We can only hope," McGonagall said with a wistful sigh as the headmaster set off to wake Kingsley and pay a surprise visit down to the dungeons to hopefully bring an end to Hermione's reign at Hogwarts.