Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I do not own.

Harry thought, as he sat near the heater in his dormitory, there was a very good chance they were going to get caught by Filch or Mrs. Norris. Harry felt he was pushing his luck, breaking another school rule today. On the other hand, Malfoys sneering face kept looming up out of the darkness. This was his big chance to beat Malfoy face-to-face. He couldn't miss it.

He looked at his watch and saw it was eleven-thirty. He stood up, slipped on his bathrobe and shoes and went to wake Thomas. It took several hard shakes and saying 'bacon' before the other boy woke up with a start and drool on his lip.

"Half-past eleven." Harry informed him. "We'd better go."

Thomas jumped into action, grabbing his own shoes and robe. They picked up their wands and, since they didn't have to worry about Neville with him still in the hospital wing, ran across the room and down the staircase into the common room. A few embers were still glowing in the fireplace and they saw the shadows of the girls waiting. Serena was wearing her pink satin pajamas and bunny slippers, hair wild and a frown on her face. Phoebe had gotten red lipstick from someone and used it like warpaint, the only color on her due to her choice of a black nightgown and black combat boots. Serena was holding a bottle of hot sauce she'd obviously taken from Phoebe and she put it on a table as they walked across the common room.

Harry pushed open the portrait and the four of them scrambled through. The hallway outside was dark and very cold. Before they got very far from the portrait hole, they heard some a sort of shuffling sound in front of them.

"What was that?" Serena asked in fear.

"Mrs. Norris, probably." Harry whispered back.

The four of them crept forward, flinching whenever one of them stepped too loudly. Harry kept his wand out, unsure of what spell he'd even try on the cat. But it wasn't Mrs. Norris. It was Neville. He was curled up on the floor, fast asleep, but jerked suddenly awake as they crept nearer.

"Thank goodness you found me! I've been out here for hours, I couldn't remember the new password to get in to bed."

"Keep your voice down, Neville. We're trying to sneak around. And the password's 'Pig snout'." Thomas informed him.

"I don't think that will help." Serena whispered from behind them. They turned around and followed her line of sight to the portrait. It appeared that The Fat Lady had gone on a nighttime visit and they were locked out of Gryffindor tower.

"It's just a portrait. Here, help me." Phoebe nudged Thomas for emphasis on who she meant and the two of them went over, trying to pull the portrait back on its hinges. It was sealed tight. Phoebe huffed and pulled something out of her boat. At first Harry thought it was her wand, but it was actually a butterfly knife. Harry decided not to question why she'd brought a knife with her to meet Malfoy for a no-contact duel.

"What are you-?" Harry started but his question was answered when Phoebe stabbed the knife in between the portrait and the wall.

"There... has to be... a lock...somewhere." She mused, wriggling her knife up and down.

"It's a magic portrait, not a regular door." Thomas felt obligated to point out.

"We're gonna get expelled." Neville moaned.

"Only if we get caught." Phoebe assured him. "Come on. You're coming with us."

They flitted along corridors striped with bars of moonlight from the high windows. At every turn Harry expected to run into Filch or Mrs. Norris, but they were lucky. They sped up a staircase to the third floor and tiptoed toward the trophy room.

Malfoy and Crabbe weren't there yet. The crystal trophy cases glimmered where the moonlight caught them. Cups, shields, plates, and statues winked silver and gold in the darkness. They edged along the walls, keeping their eyes on the doors at either end of the room. Harry took out his wand in case Malfoy leapt in and started at once. The minutes crept by and they started to grow bored.

Phoebe twirled her pocket knife around until Serena got twitchy about it and she put it away with a huff. Neville moaned a bit until Thomas distracted him with a supposedly hilarious story about how a garden gnome snuck into his family's house once.

Then a noise in the next room made them jump. Harry had only just raised his wand when they heard someone speak. And it wasn't Malfoy.

"Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner." It was Filch speaking to Mrs. Norris. Horror-struck, Harry waved madly at the others to follow him as quickly as possible; they scurried silently toward the door, away from Filch's voice. Neville's robes had barely whipped round the corner when they heard Filch enter the trophy room.

"They're in here somewhere." They heard him mutter. "Probably hiding."

"This way!" Harry whispered to the others and, petrified, they began to creep down a long gallery full of suits of armor. They could hear Filch getting nearer. Neville suddenly let out a frightened squeak and broke into a run. He tripped, grabbed Harry around the waist, and the pair of them toppled right into a suit of armor. The clanging and crashing were enough to wake the whole castle.

"RUN!" Harry yelled, all stealth thrown out the proverbial window, and the five of them sprinted down the gallery, not looking back to see whether or not Filch was following. They swung around the doorpost and galloped down one corridor then another, Harry in the lead, without any idea where they were or where they were going. They ripped through a tapestry and found themselves in a hidden passageway, hurtled along it and came out near their Charms classroom, which they knew was miles from the trophy room.

"I think we've lost him." Harry panted, leaning against the cold wall and wiping his forehead. Neville was bent double, wheezing and spluttering.

"Not...with...subtly... mind you..." Thomas panted.

"We've got to get back to Gryffindor tower as quickly as possible." Serena put in, straightening up and smoothing out her pajamas.

"Malfoy set us up!" Phoebe snarled. "That little ferret is gonna find his head in the toilet tomorrow morning!" Harry nodded in agreement to the first part of that, feeling very, very stupid. At least he wasn't any stupider than the other four who had followed him there.

"Let's go."

It wasn't going to be that simple. They hadn't gone more than a dozen paces when a doorknob rattled and something came hooting out of a classroom in front of them. It was Peeves. He caught sight of them and gave a squeal of delight.

"Shut up, Peeves, please, you'll get us thrown out." Harry begged. Peeves cackled.

"Wandering around at midnight, Ickle Firsties? Tut, tut, tut. Naughty, naughty, you'll get caughty."

"Not if you shut up!" Phoebe told him threateningly.

"Can you hit a ghost?" Thomas whispered to her.

"I'm willing to find out."

"Should tell Filch, I should." Peeves continued in a saintly voice, but his eyes glittered wickedly. "It's for your own good, you know."

"Get out of the way, man." Thomas snapped, taking a swipe at Peeves. That was a big mistake.

"STUDENTS OUT OF BED!" Peeves bellowed. "STUDENTS OUT OF BED DOWN THE CHARMS CORRIDOR!" Ducking under Peeves, they ran for their lives, right to the end of the corridor where they slammed into a door... and it was locked.

"This is it!" Neville moaned, as they pushed helplessly at the door. "We're done for! This is the end!" They could hear footsteps, Filch running as fast as he could toward Peeves's shouts.

"Move!" Phoebe shoved them aside and thrust her knife into the space between the door and the doorframe. "Honestly. Wizards can't even unlock a door without knowing a special spell and having a wand and all this and that." She grumbled. The lock clicked and Phoebe straightened up.

"You're a genius."

"You're insane."

"I respond to both, come on!" Phoebe pushed open the door and they all piled into the room, shut the door again and pressed their ears to it, listening.

"Which way did they go, Peeves?" Filch was saying. "Quick, tell me."

"Say 'please'."

"Don't mess with me, Peeves, now where did they go?"

"Shan't say nothing if you don't say please." Peeves said in his annoying singsong voice.

"All right: please."

"NOTHING! Ha haaa! Told you I wouldn't say nothing if you didn't say please! Ha ha! Haaaaaa!" And they heard the sound of Peeves whooshing away and Filch cursing in rage.

"He thinks this door is locked." Harry whispered. "I think we'll be okay. Get off, Neville!" Neville had been tugging on the sleeve of Harry's bathrobe for the last minute. "What?" Harry turned around and saw, quite clearly, what.

For a moment, he was sure he'd walked into a nightmare. This was too much, on top of everything that had happened so far. They weren't in a room, as he had supposed. They were in a corridor. The forbidden corridor on the third floor. And now they knew why it was forbidden. They were looking straight into the eyes of a monstrous dog, a dog that filled the whole space between ceiling and floor. It had three heads. Three pairs of rolling, mad eyes; three noses, twitching and quivering in their direction; three drooling mouths, saliva hanging in slippery ropes from yellowish fangs. It was standing quite still, all six eyes staring at them, and Harry knew that the only reason they weren't already dead was that their sudden appearance had taken it by surprise, but it was quickly getting over that, there was no mistaking what those thunderous growls meant. Harry groped for the doorknob. Between Filch and death, he'd take Filch.

They fell backward. Harry slammed the door shut, and they ran, they almost flew, back down the corridor. Filch must have hurried off to look for them somewhere else, because they didn't see him anywhere, but they hardly cared. All they wanted to do was put as much space as possible between them and that monster. They didn't stop running until they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady on the seventh floor.

"Where on earth have you all been?" She asked, looking at their bathrobes hanging off their shoulders, their messy hair and their flushed, sweaty faces.

"Never mind that. Pig snout, pig snout." Harry panted and the portrait swung forward. They scrambled into the common room and collapsed, trembling, into armchairs. It was a while before any of them said anything. Neville, indeed, looked as if he'd never speak again.

"What do they think they're doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?" Phoebe demanded.

"What are they thinking keeping a thing like that anywhere?" Thomas shot right back.

"Did you see what it was standing on?" Serena asked suddenly. She seemed oddly calm. Then again, no animals scared her. Not even three headed dogs, it seemed.

"The floor?" Harry suggested. "I wasn't looking at its feet, I was too busy with its heads."

"Well, I was trying not to look at its heads. It was standing on a trapdoor. It's obviously guarding something."

"Maybe it was a bunch of three-headed puppies, I dunno know!" Phoebe snapped.

"I think it takes two three-headed dogs to make a litter of three-headed puppies." Thomas told her.

"Oh, shut it."

"Let's just go to bed." Serena suggested. Everyone else nodded in agreement.

As the boys snuck back into their room, Harry had something else to think about as he climbed back into bed. The dog was guarding something... What had Hagrid said? Gringotts was the safest place in the world for something you wanted to hide, except perhaps Hogwarts. The vault in Gringotts had been emptied... and he think he knew where the contents went.