Ron's bad mood improved as the quidditch match against Ravenclaw drew near. Oliver Wood had the team practicing as often as possible. Sometimes, Dudley and Dean went to watch them—on one occasion accompanied by Luna and Ginny.

"I'll be supporting Ravenclaw this time," Luna announced. She had procured a stuffed raven from somewhere which she wore perched on top of her hat. It reminded Dudley of Neville's gran and her stuffed vulture. "I'm trying to charm it to say 'Go Ravenclaw!' but so far all it can do is squawk."

It was sunny on the day of the match but with a chilly wind so they all huddled up on the stands to keep warm. Luna was sat with the rest of her house today. Dudley could just make her out thanks to the ludicrous raven. Dean insisted it was actually a crow. Dudley didn't know what the difference was and had always assumed they were the same thing.

"It's Ravenclaw, Dud," he had said. "Not Crowclaw—they're too different birds."

"Shouldn't the Ravenclaw animal be a raven then?" Neville said. "And shouldn't Luna be wearing an eagle hat?"

"Well, shouldn't ours be a griffin?" Dudley asked. "Slytherins works though—slytherin slithering… a slithering snake."

"I dunno what a Hufflepuff is though," Neville said.

Neither of them did. They looked to Hermione who usually knew everything, but she shrugged. "I don't know, I think it's just a name."

"A lame name," Dudley muttered. "If you were going to pick to be called Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin or Hufflepuff. No way would you pick Hufflepuff."

"Or Slytherin," said Neville. "Would you trust anybody named Slytherin?"

"Especially Salazar Slytherin," Dean added. "That just sounds villainous."

"And Godric Gryffindor sounds more heroic," Neville said.

They were interrupted by Madame Hooch blowing her whistle and the players took to the sky. The Ravenclaw team played in robes of blue and were captained by Roger Davies. The only girl on the team was a pretty girl with long black hair called Cho Chang. She was flying a Comet 260. It was a decent broom, but nowhere near as good as Ron's Cleansweep.

"Johnson with the quaffle, she goes past two Ravenclaw chasers—what a flyer that girl is. The best in the school," said Lee Jordan. "Hopefully if I praise her enough she'll go out with me one day."

"Jordan!" McGonagall warned.

"She passes to Bell—another excellent chaser. She feints and passes to Spinett. She shoots—no—it was a pass to Johnson who scores!"

The Gryffindors cheered. It had been a nice play by the Gryffindor chasers.

"Wood has put together one of the finest teams Hogwarts has seen," Jordan said to boos from the Slytherins, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. "Wood of course is been scouted by a number of quidditch teams—and that's why!"

Wood had just pulled off a spectacular finger-tip save.

Ron was circling the pitch with Cho Chang tailing her. Her tactic seemed to be to stick close to Ron for now rather than seek the snitch herself.

Lee Jordan had spotted that two. "Chang seems to be making no attempt to find the snitch—Ravenclaw need to win by a large margin today to have any chance of winning the House Cup."

The Ravenclaws booed this remark.

"And Weasley dives!"

Dudley stood up to see as Ron dived towards one of the stands.

Chang was following desperately behind.

Instantly, Ron veered to the side, pulling out of the dive. Chang did likewise, twisting to the right. Her broom caught the side of the stand and she almost fell off, clinging on my one hand before managing to haul herself back on.

"And that was a feint by Weasley!" Lee Jordan said as the Gryffindors cheered. The Ravenclaws were applauding too as Cho Chang did well to stay on her broom.

"A good move that's got Chang off his tail for now. Weasley has really come into his own this season. That dive into the Dementors in the match versus Slytherin will go down into Hogwarts legend."

The match continued for another two hours. The Ravenclaw team were quite good, but Gryffindors trio of chasers were better. For every goal that Ravenclaw scored, Gryffindor scored three.

"And it's Gryffindor 330, Ravenclaw 110," Lee announced as Angelina Johnson scored again.

Finally, Ravenclaw were put out of their misery. Ron feinted flying towards the Ravenclaw goal before turning 180 degrees and shooting towards Wood, grabbing the snitch almost unopposed as Chang's broom just couldn't keep up.

"And Gryffindor win!" Jordan crowed. "The Championship is all but in the bag with one game to go. Slytherin need a big win against Ravenclaw and need Hufflepuff to beat Gryffindor—a difficult task. This Gryffindor team looks invincible!"

"Party in the Common Room!" Lee shouted to cheers from the rest.

It felt as though they had already won the Quidditch Cup; the party went on all day and well into the night. Fred and George Weasley disappeared for a couple of hours and returned with armfuls of bottles of butterbeer, pumpkin fizz, and several bags full of Honeydukes sweets.

"How did you do that?" squealed Angelina Johnson as George started throwing Peppermint Toads into the crowd.

"With a little help from Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs," Fred muttered in Dudley's ear.

Only one person wasn't joining in the festivities. Hermione, incredibly, was sitting in a corner, attempting to read an enormous book entitled Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles. Dudley broke away from the table where Fred and George had started juggling butterbeer bottles and went over to her.

"Don't you think you should take a break for one night?" he asked.

"I can't," said Hermione in a strangely high-pitched voice, not looking up. "And I'm very glad we won, and I think you did really well, but I need to read this by Monday."

"Come on, Hermione, come and have some food," Dudley said, looking over at Ron and wondering whether he was in a good enough mood to bury the hatchet.

"I can't, Dud. I've still got four hundred and twenty-two pages to read!" said Hermione, now sounding slightly hysterical. "Anyway..." She glanced over at Ron too. "He doesn't want me to join in."

There was no arguing with this, as Ron chose that moment to say loudly, "If Scabbers hadn't just been eaten, he could have had some of those Fudge Flies. He used to really like them -"

Hermione burst into tears. Before Dudley could say or do anything, she tucked the enormous book under her arm, and, still sobbing, ran toward the staircase to the girls' dormitories and out of sight.

Dudley looked over at Ron and decided to keep doing what he had been and stay out of it. If Ron and Hermione had fallen out, it wasn't his business. Though, his transfiguration, history and potions homework was suffering as a result. Still, he did at least manage to copy some of Neville's homework so he wasn't falling hugely behind in those subjects.

The Gryffindor party ended only when Professor McGonagall turned up in her tartan dressing gown and hair net at one in the morning, to insist that they all go to bed. Dudley and Ron climbed the stairs to their dormitory, still discussing the match. At last, exhausted, Dudley climbed into bed, twitched the hangings of his four-poster shut to block out a ray of moonlight, lay back, and felt himself almost instantly drifting off to sleep...

He had a very strange dream – Gilderoy Lockhart was trying to teach him to pull a rabbit out of the hat, but time he tried, he pulled out a random item instead, filling up the room he was in until it was full to the ceiling with an assortment of junk. Before the dream could go further, a sudden scream woke him up.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Dudley woke as suddenly as though he'd been hit in the face. Disoriented in the total darkness, he fumbled with his hangings, he could hear movements around him, and Seamus Finnigan's voice from the other side of the room.

"What's going on?"

Dudley thought he heard the dormitory door slam. At last finding the divide in his curtains, he ripped them back, and at the same moment, Dean Thomas lit his lamp.

Ron was sitting up in bed, the hangings torn from one side, a look of utmost terror on his face.

"Black! Sirius Black! With a knife!"

"What?"

"Here! Just now! Slashed the curtains! Woke me up!"

"You sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?" said Dean.

"Look at the curtains! I tell you, he was here!"

They all scrambled out of bed; Dudley reached the dormitory door first, and they sprinted back down the staircase. Doors opened behind them, and sleepy voices called after them.

"Who shouted?"

"What're you doing?"

The common room was lit with the glow of the dying fire, still littered with the debris from the party. It was deserted.

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?"

"I'm telling you, I saw him!"

"What's all the noise?"

"Professor McGonagall told us to go to bed!"

A few of the girls had come down their staircase, pulling on dressing gowns and yawning. Boys, too, were reappearing.

"Excellent, are we carrying on?" said Fred Weasley brightly.

"Everyone back upstairs!" said Percy, hurrying into the common room and pinning his Head Boy badge to his pajamas as he spoke.

"Perce - Sirius Black!" said Ron faintly. "In our dormitory! With a knife! Woke me up!"

The common room went very still.

"Nonsense!" said Percy, looking startled. "You had too much to eat, Ron - had a nightmare -"

"I'm telling you -"

"Now, really, enough's enough!"

Professor McGonagall was back. She slammed the portrait behind her as she entered the common room and stared furiously around.

"I am delighted that Gryffindor won the match, but this is getting ridiculous! Percy, I expected better of you!"

"I certainly didn't authorize this, Professor!" said Percy, puffing himself up indignantly. "I was just telling them all to get back to bed! My brother Ron here had a nightmare -"

"IT WASN'T A NIGHTMARE!" Ron yelled. "PROFESSOR, I WOKE UP, AND SIRIUS BLACK WAS STANDING OVER ME, HOLDING A KNIFE!"

Professor McGonagall stared at him.

"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley, how could he possibly have gotten through the portrait hole?"

"Ask him!" said Ron, pointing a shaking finger at the back of Sir Cadogan's picture. "Ask him if he saw -"

Glaring suspiciously at Ron, Professor McGonagall pushed the portrait back open and went outside. The whole common room listened with bated breath. "Sir Cadogan, did you just let a man enter Gryffindor Tower?"

"Certainly, good lady!" cried Sir Cadogan.

There was a stunned silence, both inside and outside the common room.

"You - you did?" said Professor McGonagall. "But - but the password!"

"He had 'em!" said Sir Cadogan proudly. "Had the whole week's, my lady! Read 'em off a little piece of paper!"

Professor McGonagall pulled herself back through the portrait hole to face the stunned crowd. She was white as chalk.

"Which person," she said, her voice shaking, "which abysmally foolish person wrote down this week's passwords and left them lying around?"

There was utter silence, broken by the smallest of terrified squeaks. Neville Longbottom, trembling from head to fluffy slippered toes, raised his hand slowly into the air.