I can't believe the response I've had with this! Thank you so much for your reviews, you've encouraged me to write more along this plot line

Chapter Five

"I'm telling you he's worked it out!" I panted, taking the steps two at a time with John and Lilly in tow. We halted at the top of the stairs and pressed ourselves against the wall to let a teacher go past, it wouldn't do for them to find out about the party. Once they were gone we hurtled out into the corridor.

"Gwen stop for a second!" John gasped, grabbing my amr and pulling to to a halt. "We can't just run around without a clue where we're going! Sherlock might have just gone back to Ravenclaw Tower!"

"John, please, since when does Sherlock elect to go to bed? You have to tell him when to eat and change his shirt! You didn't see him, he's worked out who the murderour is and he's gone after him all alone, he's in danger!"

"Well how are we supposed to find the murderer? Unless you've got a magic tracking device we're screwed." Lilly said, clutching a stitching in her side. I bent down and rested my hands on my knees, and then smacked my hand to my forehead.

"The ring!" I cried, comprehension dawning on me. "The bloody ring! Kelly would want to find something as precious as that if she ever lost it, so she put a tracking spell on it! Does anyone know how to do that?"

"I can." said John, frowning, "But you need a key word to use in the spell, something to link it to the object."

Lilly looked at me and the same excitement I could feel bubbling up inside me was visable in her eyes too.

"Rachel!" we both cried in unison. John needed no further encouragement. He whipped out his wand and held it in the palm of his hand.

"Cacumino Rachel!" he said, and the wand spun in his hand until it pointed towards the Grand Staircase at the far end of the corridor. We all pause for the tiniest fraction of a second, before running like the wind for the stairs. The wand kept spinning in different directions as we re-positioned ourselves until, somewhere on the fifth floor, we had to stop and consult it properly. It was now pointing to our left, right into the wall.

"Well what does that mean?" asked Lilly in confusion. I looked out of the window at the grounds and gasped.

"Oh, look!" I chocked, and pointed through the glass towards a tower level with our corridor. There, in the top room we could see Sherlock and Mr Filch, the psychopathic caretaker, sitting at a table. Sherlock was reaching for a bottle that even from here looked ominous.

"He's never going to drink it!" Lilly gasped. But Sherlock was uncorcking the bottle, rasing to his lips!

"No Sherlock!" I screamed though I knew he couldn't hear me. John raised his wand and said firmly,

"Get out of the way Gwen!"

I leapt aside and John took a steady shot at Filch through the window. His red spell smashed a hole in our window, sped across the twenty foot gap between us and the tower, shattered the second window and caught Filch in the back of the head. Filch jerked violently off his chair onto the floor and Sherlock leapt to his feet. He stared at Filch for a moment before looking up at us. For a second, we just watched each other, then I did quite a bizarre thing. I waved.

"So you really have no idea who shot the spell." said Mr Potter, his eyebrow raised and his arms folded. We were in the Entrance Hall and the whole place was filled with Law Enforcement guys and teachers. Medi-wizards kept coming up to us and trying to check us over for injuries. We all shook our heads innocently. The four of us were sat in a row on the very bottom steps of the Grand Staircase and through Mr Potter's legs I could see Donovan glaring at us. Somehow the sight cheered me up a lot.

"And I suppose you were all just sleepwalking and happened to come across Filch and Sherlock in a locked room at the top of the tower?" Harry added, his mouth quivering like he was fighting not to smile. Sherlock looked up at him, frowning.

"Look, we're in shock, we've got blankets and everything!"

He plucked at the woollen blankets the medi-wizards had insisted on draping over our shoulders. Harry threw up his hands in a peaceful gesture.

"Alright alright, I'll leave you to recover, I have a lot of paperwork to fill out."

He turned and left us to sit in silence. We watched as Filch's body was carried past on a stretched and a chill ran down my spine. He had hit his head as he landed on the stone floor and blood had leaked into his brain. The medi-wizards said he had an undetected brain tumour which had caused extensive damage, go figure. The stretcher was taken out into the grounds where a chilly mist was leaking into the Hall. After a pause John said, without turning to Sherlock,

"You were going to drink that damn potion weren't you?"

"What gave you that impression? I had the situation totally under control."

All three of us turned our heads slowly to glare at Sherlock with matching expressions of incredulity. He gazed steadily back and we couldn't help ourselves, we laughed.

"We shouldn't be laughing!" Lilly chuckled. "It's crime scene!"

"Go on then, admit it." I said after we'd calmed down. Sherlock frowned at me.

"Admit what?"

"Admit that you were wrong about Rachel, admit that knowing a bit about human sentiment is useful."

"No I won't, I realised who was behind it all without needing to know who Rachel was. All I needed was cool logic."

"Oh and where did your cool logic lead you exactly? To the receiving end of a poison!" Lilly said angrily and Sherlock shrugged.

"I could tell it wasn't the real poison, child's play."

Before any of us could shout him down, James Moriarty came sauntering up to us. He was in his dressing gown so he'd obviously just been woken up but I could see the tell tale signs of confetti in his hair. Another secret party goer it seemed.

"Not a bad job boys and girls." he drawled and we eyed him suspiciously. He was watching us with a curious expression, it was something like hunger and I didn't like it. He was looking at Sherlock in particular.

"Very impressive work Sherlock, I'm sure your brother will be very proud."

Sherlock grimaced and Moriarty chuckled softly.

"Professor McGonagall asked me to escort you back to your dorms but your big kids now, I think you can take yourselves."

We understood this as a dismissal and we got up to leave, Lilly and I for the dungeons, the boys for their respective towers. We were almost to the stairs when Moriarty called,

"Try not to trip over any more murders on your way to bed now."