After returning to the dormitories and finishing some homework in the common room, Emma was waiting, impatiently, in her bed. It was about 11 o'clock at night and the others were all asleep by now. Emma knew it was too soon, she'd not heard anything since she checked her trunk thoroughly after putting her homework away, but she just wanted to check again.
To her surprise, there it was. Another white, opaque cylindrical bottle. Emma quickly and quietly grabbed it and made her way down to the common room, hoping it would be empty.
After a cursory glance around the room, Emma didn't see anyone.
'I can't believe you're going to do this, Harry.'
Emma quickly hid the bottle she was holding behind her back as a lamp flickered on.
'Oh, it's you.' said Hermione, wearing her pink dressing-gown. 'I thought you were Harry, sorry.'
'That's okay.' stammered Emma, sitting down opposite Hermione, trying desperately to keep the bottle hidden.
'What are you hiding?' chirped Hermione, leaning to the side to get a peek.
'Uhm... nothing. Just juice.'
Emma lifted the bottle for Hermione to see, but quickly put it behind her again.
'Why did you think I was Harry? What's he done this time?'
'He's determined to go to the trophy room at midnight to have a wizard duel with Malfoy.' huffed Hermione, clearly annoyed.
Emma sighed.
'When will he learn? Malfoy's just goading him because Harry always falls for it.'
'I know! But worst of all, he's going to get caught and lose us house points!'
She looked very cross now.
'So you're waiting here to stop him?'
'Yes!'
Emma was desperately thirsty now but couldn't drink here, not in front of Hermione, and she couldn't wait until midnight, after Harry had been stopped. She couldn't leave through the portrait hole either because Hermione would stop her too. The only choice left was the girls bathroom and hope nobody else came in.
Emma got up to go to the bathroom, bottle in hand.
'You're not going to help me stop them?'
'Sure, I just need to go to the bathroom.'
That seemed to ease Hermione's mood a little, but she still looked cross. As Emma walked into the bathroom she could see Hermione's lamp go out again.
Emma entered one of the cubicles, locked the door and sat on the floor cross-legged with her back to the door so nobody could open it. It was there she opened the bottle.
Everything was the same as the last time. She lost control upon smelling the blood, it was cold too, like it had been kept in a fridge and the shaking-adrenaline feeling was just as satisfying.
A few moments after she'd finished, she heard raised voices coming from the common room. Harry must have come down. Emma wanted to get up and help like she promised but she still hadn't regained control of herself yet. She could only sit there with her head leaned against the cubicle door, barely able to even twitch her fingers.
By the time Emma could stand and leave the bathroom, Hermione was nowhere to be seen. She decided to go upstairs to check if Hermione was there and to get some homework to do overnight. Hermione's bed looked just as it did when Emma went down earlier. The curtains were drawn so Emma assumed Hermione had gone to bed. She grabbed her Transfiguration and Charms homework and started work on them at one of the desks down in the common room.
It was about an hour later when Emma heard a commotion outside the portrait hole and got up to have a look. She'd only taken a few steps when Harry, Ron, Neville and Hermione all tumbled in through the hole and onto the floor or nearby chairs breathlessly, like they'd been running.
'What do they think they're doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?' said Ron. 'If any dog needs exercise, that one does.'
Emma was about to ask what's going on when Hermione sat up, and she looked really mad this time.
'You don't use your eyes, any of you, do you?' she snapped. 'Didn't you see what it was standing on?'
'The floor?' Harry suggested. 'I wasn't looking at it's feet, I was too busy with it's heads.'
'No, not the floor. It was standing on a trapdoor. It's obviously guarding something.'
Hermione stood up and glared at Harry and Ron.
'I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed – or worse, expelled. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed.'
Hermione turned towards the dormitories, still facing Harry and Ron and still glaring, took a step and walked straight into Emma. Emma had to catch Hermione to stop her falling over.
'Sorry, Emma. I didn't see you there.'
'Don't worry, it seems to happen a lot to me.'
Emma saw out of the corner of her eye, Harry and Ron nodding to each other.
'I thought you'd be in bed by now?' Hermione asked.
'I'm not tired, but you're one to talk. I thought you were going to stop them, not join them.'
'You'd think we dragged her along, wouldn't you?' said Ron.
Both Emma and Hermione glared at him.
'No thanks to them, I got locked out!' spat Hermione storming off to the girls dormitories.
'So, who won?' asked Emma to Harry, sarcastically.
'Won?' asked Harry.
'Your duel. Hermione said you were going to duel Malfoy.'
'He didn't show up and told Filch we'd be there.'
'Knew it.' sighed Emma. 'Fell for it again. You know, you shouldn't let Malfoy play you like that.'
'We didn't think he'd chicken out.'
'That's because you didn't think that was his plan all along. Get Harry Potter to break another school rule and get him caught. Cunning really. I can see why the sorting hat put him in Slytherin.'
Emma looked at the three boys with their puzzled looks, shrugged and went back to her homework. The boys went off to their dormitories. Emma heard Ron say something, but only caught 'the pair of them'.