Chapter 18: The Happiness was short-lived
However, the joy of the victory over the Ravenclaw team was not destined to last for a long time. The next day around noon, Alicia Spinnet's announcement said that she had canceled 150 points awarded to the Gryffindor team for the catching of the Snitch, so the score of the game was set to be 140:150 in the favor of Ravenclaw.
Needless to say, the Gryffindors simply couldn't believe their eyes. At breakfast time, when Harry had headed to the Great Hall, he had met Jodie, who had stopped for a moment and had promised him, "Just wait for it, I'll show you what Ravenclaws are made of! Those points you got weren't fair." But Harry hadn't paid much attention to her. Of course, she was upset about the loss, but at Hogwarts, no one ever dared to argue referee's decisions, everyone simply took them as true and settled with them.
Apparently it was true for everyone except Jodie Muller. As Harry learned later, she had gone directly to Alicia's office with the thick volume of the Rulebook of International Quidditch Association in her armpit this morning and had proved to the referee of the game that in the case of losing the Snitch, at the moment when the fact is made ascertain, the referee is obliged to stop the game and must release a new Snitch. Therefore, according to the rules, Alicia, the game referee, had to take the Snitch Harry had caught out of the game and had to release a completely new Snitch with undisturbed flesh memory. Thus, the one hundred and fifty points awarded to Harry were unfair and unjust, since Jodie had no chance of getting the Snitch out of Ginny's cape in this particular situation.
Alicia had indeed taken into account Jodie's objections and the laws she put in front of her, so she actually did cancel Harry's earned points for catching the Snitch, but she rejected the Gryffindor Team's claim for a replay, because according to the rules of Hogwarts, the Quidditch game ends when the sun sets without giving points to any of the teams. And since their game ended when the sun had practically set, so this would turn out as the actual result because the game would have ended anyway, if Harry wouldn't have figured out where to find the Snitch. Alicia wasn't going to change her decision the second time and the Gryffindor team had to settle with the fact that they had lost this particular game, at least, when considering the scored points. The only comforting fact was that they still had earned more points than the Hufflepuff team who had lost to Slytherin in their first game of the Hogwarts Quidditch season.
The next few days, the Gryffindors walked through the castle, being unusually frustrated as they praised Harry's ingenuity or found even more new ways to curse the Ravenclaw's cunning and the referee's indecision practically in every sentence they spoke.
Contrarily, the Ravenclaws were feeling on top of the world. Hearing the Gryffindors' insults, they just mockingly replied, "Our Chasers were better; our Chasers were better," until it practically turned into a slogan. The Ravenclaws also thought about Harry's "feat" quite different.
Some of them just said, "It's not a great skill when you take the Snitch out of your girlfriend's clothes. I'm also an expert of undressing my girlfriend; there's no Quidditch skill needed for that."
In the evening of the very same day, Sunday, Harry practically thought of it as a no big deal, but, of course, it wasn't so easy for Ron, since he thought that only because of his incompetence he had let the last goal in and so he was the reason why they lost the game. Otherwise, the outcome of the game would have been a draw. Actually, his self-reproach was justified, and although any kind of sports in general was unpredictable as Hermione repeatedly did remind him, Ron still managed to go into an overly grumpy mood when encountering the tiniest of inconveniences such as bread having a crust too stony, annoying first-years looking at him, or seeing ever glaring Mrs. Norris. Only Luna had amused him with her new earrings, declaring they were made of the tails of Bowtruckles, which supposedly gave their wearer endurance, as he touched one of the brown stick like decoration the blond girl had put on her ears. Though, Hermione had objected that the Bowtruckles didn't have any tails, Ron had ignored his girlfriend's comment and had just grinned as he had said with a chuckle, "That's a nice one."
The surprise came to them on Thursday evening, when Ron still had been grumpy all day long – he hadn't even been pleased by the fact that Switch had thoroughly reproved Malfoy and Theodore in his morning class for their "negligent way of waving around their wands", also taking away 50 House points for each of them, since the young men of Slytherin had blew up a table they needed to turn into a pig making splinters of wood fly in every direction into the bodies of themselves and other of the Slytherins nearby. Luckily, the injuries weren't serious and Madam Pomfrey was quick to treat all of their shallow wounds. Then, in the afternoon, Ron had made an excuse that he could no longer stand being in the Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom, so he wanted to go out for a walk.
A few hours later, Ron came back – with a great surprise to his friends – seemingly in a rather good mood.
Crossing the Bathroom and coming to stop in front of the boiling cauldron, he began to rummage through his pockets of his robes and he pulled out a big tuft of silver threads. "I happened to go to the tea with Hagrid, and it turned out he had found a good handful of unicorn tail hair. So I asked if we could get some, because we right now need them in our Potions lessons," Ron said with a wink.
"That's great, Ron," Hermione promptly complimented him with a smile. "The unicorn tail hair definitely contains a pretty amount of magic energy." And she right away went to work to add the magic power of the unicorns into their potion, which they were brewing for a few weeks already. Maybe now they will finally be able to create a strong enough essence that could point the direction, at least for a moment. At first, even that would be enough for them, if they had the faintest idea of where to look for the Diadem.
Though, the separation of the magic from unicorn tail hair wasn't so easy. After supper, Hermione had to look again at the library for more tips how the magic of the unicorn actually works, so they managed to finish their brew only in the next day.
Harry just couldn't wait to try it out. Maybe now they will finally succeed. Hermione filled the essence in several phials and they joined their hands to combine their magic and Hermione cited the self-made Rite Chant for like a minute. As she kept holding her fingers around the tiny bottle with the essence having a pale glow after it was saturated with the magical energy of unicorn tail hair, the girl finished citing the words of the Locator Spell and kept her wand placed horizontally on her opened palm. At first, her wand just twitched like they had seen hundred times before. Harry's heart practically deflated in frustration, but then the wand lunged in the air and as it fell to the ground, it made several oscillations on the floor as it was tilted at an odd angle. The oscillations soon subsided, and the wand fell on the floor with a clattering sound. The shine of the phial of the essence was gone, too.
"So, it didn't work," Ron said grumpily.
"I wouldn't be so quick to make that conclusion right away," Hermione replied, as Harry thought, looking too happy. Her wand had just twitched and dropped to the ground – what's the use of that?
"Hermione, but your wand just fell to the ground," Ginny began as she let go of Harry and Ron's hands, and a second later Harry could see on her face that there had appeared a bright thought in her mind, "but then later it was pointing upwards."
"Precisely!" she exclaimed and her brown bushy hair swayed as she showed her excitement. "My wand was pointing upwards. This castle is not only spacious but it's also having many floors."
"So, if we go upstairs and repeat it, maybe we could find out at least a direction where to look next?" Harry finally made a conclusion.
"Exactly!" Hermione confirmed with a smile.
They hurried promptly up to the seventh floor, which was usually quiet, for there were only lessons of Ancient Runes taught by Professor Bathsheda Babbling, which were not among the most visited subjects. Stopping near the former Room of Requirement, they felt faint waves of heat coming from the door. They did not pay much attention to it and began their search again. This time, after a few minutes of casting the spell, her wand began turning around in Hermione's hand, as if wanting to stop, showing the direction of the Forbidden Forest, but then it turned in an instant to the opposite direction and pointed clearly eastward until the magic of the essence had ceased.
"It's in that direction, more in the direction of the East wing of the castle," Harry exclaimed excitedly.
"Don't be so quick with your conclusions yet, because this spell only gives you a direction, and quite a vague one. We don't know exactly what the wand has actually detected and pointed to," Hermione objected.
"Wait a minute; weren't you searching for the Ravenclaw's Diadem, Hermione?" Ron said, confused.
"Of course, I am, but you have to understand that there's no such exact spell, which could find only the Ravenclaw's Diadem, because we haven't got any of Ravenclaw's belongings. When we were deep in the Underground, there has been just a faint background of magic, so I could ask specifically for Ravenclaw, because the spell even detected the incredibly weak signal from Harry's pouch with the destroyed Horcruxes. But up here within the castle where every inch is full with magic, I am now searching for the energy of Hogwarts itself, where it is atypically concentrated since the signal for asking only Ravenclaw is too weak. I thought that a relic of Hogwarts founder could give such a signal, so we need to detect all of the amplified Hogwarts signals and check them," she explained. It seemed that Ron hadn't understood much of it, but Harry realized at least enough of it to know that they will need to repeat this procedure many more times until they could be sure what exactly they had detected.
And so they did it again and, after repeating it for several more times, they had come to the rather ugly looking gargoyle. The phials of essence they had taken with them were also close to exhausting.
Performing her invented searching procedure for the last time, Hermione saw her wand undoubtedly pointing to the McGonagall's Office.
"So, the Diadem could really be hidden in the Headmaster's Office," Ginny said.
"This is exactly that one place where I wouldn't like to break into," Ron added grumpily, shaking his head.
"Don't be so quick, we have to carefully think about it and we definitely don't need to break into the Headmaster's Office right now," Hermione said in a whisper, wanting to calm him down. "We can't be sure, what exactly our Locator Spell had detected in there. Because, if there was a place with amplified Hogwarts energy, then it was the Headmaster's Office. I think we should check all other corners of the Hogwarts as well," she suggested, and Harry suppressed a sigh of relief at this thought.
"But let's do this after the Defence Against the Dark Arts, okay?" Harry said.
"I agree with you, and now it's time for lunch," Ron added.
In the afternoon, they had managed to detect a vague trace of a westward direction, pointing towards the Forbidden Forest, but as they entered the Owlery, the westernmost point of Hogwarts, they could no longer detect that signal, and the wand continued stubbornly pointing to the direction of the Headmaster's Office.
They had to explore more the Western wing, but after dinner, it had turned into impossible task as the Raveclaws gave them suspicious glances, returning to their Common Room near the Owlery, so they decided not to challenge their fate and to do again the searching only when the classes were proceeding when the possibility to meet the students was very low.
It meant that the search had to be omitted on Saturday and Sunday as well, which pleased Hermione in some sense, since she could peacefully do her studying. Now, when the end of November had come, the professors have been especially willing to assign them an enormous load of homework so they would be able to finish the first term of the Hogwarts school year after a month.
In a blink of an eye there came Monday, when they had free time during the two hours before Herbology, so they hurried to the vicinity of the Owlery to continue their experiments with the Locator Spell.
Now, standing in the middle of the fifth floor, they again saw the slight twitch of the wand toward the west.
"I wonder, what could it mean?" Harry said, confused. "The wand shows that what we are looking for is on one of the upper floors, possibly on the west side. That is, if we assume that the indication of the McGonagall's Office is not true."
"In addition, in the Owlery we lost the direction, but in the rest of the castle we were able to detect the pointing to the west at least a tiny bit," Ron added.
"Then it means that the Diadem is hidden in the Owlery?" Ginny thought out loud.
"I've searched everything over there for many times already. There are only owls and their droppings," Harry mumbled.
"I would like to suggest that we have to try to find the exact place, where the twitching to the west disappears. Maybe it'll reveal something to us," Hermione suggested. The friends agreed with her, even though they were beginning to feel like this kind of searching was something like a lost cause.
Moving down the hallway, they slowly approached the Owlery until a bell suddenly announced the end of the first lesson. Hermione carefully stored those several remaining bottles of the essence back in her bag and began discussing with her friends, where they should check more the searching directions.
Chattering and discussing, they had come close to the stairs connecting fifth, sixth and seventh floors, where they often saw Ravenclaws going up and down.
"Well, well, so what do we have here?" suddenly, there sounded a voice of a girl with an undertone of great irritation and dislike. As he turned around, Harry saw Jodie, the Captain of the Quidditch Team. She stood in her place her arms crossed as she gave the Gryffindors a stern and hostile look.
"Well, we have things to do right here," Ron simply stated. "Why – is it prohibited to walk down the hallways now?"
"That's interesting – what kind of things do you have to do right here? So, actually, what exactly are you looking for here – next to our Common Room?" Jodie demanded again, and a few girls were already gathering behind her back as they stretched out their necks and wanted to know what was going on.
"So what, if we are looking here for something?" Ron replied, sounding just as silly as answering the first question.
"So it sounds to me like you are looking for trouble, aren't you?" Jodie asked venomously.
Then Ginny spoke up, "We were just passing by, that's all."
"Hmpf," she snorted mockingly. "Somehow I have a hard time to believe it. I would rather say that you are trying to sabotage something against the Ravenclaw Team; you are planning something bad for us." Jodie wasn't easily going to give in.
"Please, listen to me, Jodie," Harry began, trying to calm down his Quidditch rival, "The fact that we are here now has absolutely nothing to do with Quidditch. Really, we were just passing by. And I want you to know that I don't feel like seeking revenge against you. Not at all; it was just a sports game. There can happen everything in a sports game, and therefore I don't consider it worth to keep a bad mind about it."
Jodie still gave a suspicious glance at him, and then added venomously as she passed them by, "Still, I find the fact that you're wandering around here quite strange."
When the Ravenclaw girls were gone away, Hermione just shook her head incredulously, "I will never understand this quarrelling about the Quidditch. What's the benefit of it?"
"That's right, don't talk about things you don't understand, Hermione," Ron added teasingly. Hermione gave him an odd look, and he immediately added, "I'm just kidding. Of course, you can talk about everything you want."
„But actually Hermione's right – we could do here who knows what, but her first suggestion was that we wanted to make some revengeful move due to the outcome of the Quidditch match," Ginny said.
„Actually we were doing here who knows what," Harry said as he raised an eyebrow at Ginny.
„Let's forget these ugly intricacies of the Quidditch. I suppose we should try the searching again just after the stairs, right? Of course, after the bell rings," Hermione suggested.
The friends awaited the bell for the second class and began casting the Locator Spell again. And what a surprise – the faint indication to the west had disappeared.
They searched as diligently as possible all over the closest vicinity of all the upper floors next to the stairs leading to the Ravenclaw Tower, but there was nothing suspicious or unusual, or at least not more unusual as anywhere else in Hogwarts. Later, after summoning Luna out of the Ravenclaw Tower, they asked her help for inspecting the Ravenclaw Tower itself, but the girl said she hadn't noticed anything worth of mentioning before. She had been aware of their search, so she had investigated the Ravenclaw Tower before already in the start of the autumn, and she definitely would have told them immediately if she had found anything.
It was time for them to attend their usual Monday Herbology class, where Sprout announced that they no longer have to feed the Venomous Tentaculas. "These fatties don't need any additional feeding, and they also must be allowed to rest in the winter. Therefore, today you will tend the Spiky Bushes. This job won't be complicated, but keep in mind, my dear students, that in the case of feeling a threat, these bushes tend to shoot out their thorns." Then, the professor had taken them to another corner of the greenhouse, where shrubs with thorny branches having small, dark green leaves were lined up. Harry thought the Spiky Bushes weren't scary at all, but those rose-sized thorns might not feel nice if they happen to prickle just right into, let's say, an arm.
They had to dig the soil around the bushes and water them. So far in the first half of the class everything went smoothly. Harry was now heading after the watering can when he suddenly met Terry's gaze. The Ravenclaw guy stared at him so intently, practically with a dark hatred, but a second later, Terry turned away as if nothing had happened. Then Harry joined others who needed to fill their watering cans.
Harry went back to his friends, eager to tell them about Terry's strange look, but at that moment Hannah's cry sounded, and right away, there started a mess.
Hanna had accidentally touched a branch of a Spiky Bush with her watering can, so the Bush had instantly shot out its thorns. Now Hannah's arm was covered all over with short, curved thorns. Neville had right away rushed to help her, and a few moments later, Sprout also stood next to her with a worried face as she had made her way in her short steps.
"There's no need to panic. Thorns are not poisonous. Of course, my dear, the feeling definitely isn't a very pleasant one," Sprout said as she gave her a sweet comforting smile.
Soon Neville had freed herself of all the thorns as he pulled them out of her robes, but meanwhile Harry had already forgotten about Terry.
However, to Harry's surprise, he soon noticed having receiving strangely angry and hostile looks also from other Ravenclaws, especially from the members of the Ravenclaw Quidditch Team.
In the afternoon, as they were doing their homework at the library in their usual quartet again, they were suddenly disturbed by Sinistra, their Head of Gryffindor.
"Miss Granger, please come with me. There is a situation at the Ravenclaw Tower, where your help is much needed," the professor said seriously.
Hermione right away closed her book and a second later was ready to follow the professor.
"A situation at the Ravenclaw Tower? I wonder, what does that mean?" Ron asked when Hermione was gone.
"Who knows? But have you noticed that the Ravenclaws are looking at us with very strange gazes today?" Harry also asked the thing that was worrying him for today.
"Yes, a few of them stared oddly at me too, but I just thought that this Jodie surely had made an announcement to everyone that we are planning to take some kind revenge on them," Ginny added.
"We have to wait for Hermione to return; I don't think we could learn something about this any sooner," Harry said. At that moment, almost as being called by somebody, Luna appeared as she bypassed a section of bookshelves. She noticed her friends and came over to them.
"Hi," she greeted them. "Harry, why did you put the Trip Jinx on the stairs leading to my Tower?" Luna, as always, put everything very bluntly.
"Why I should put the Trip Jinx anywhere?" Harry said, unable to believe the insult she had stated, but then he had no reason not to believe Luna. She never lied or made fun of him.
"In the morning, Jodie loudly told everyone that you were planning something bad for them, because you still cannot accept the loss at the Quidditch match, but when you asked for me to come out of the Common Room, I did succeed in calming her down when I told her you had come to visit me. However, when people started to trip down the stairs, Jodie insisted that only you have to be blamed for that," she explained what had happened today.
"Seriously? That game was at least a week ago. She is one persistent girl," Ginny said.
"But who could put that jinx there?" Harry asked.
"Basically, it could be everyone who wanted to gnaw at Ravenclaws," Ginny replied.
"Or anyone who wanted to gnaw at you," Ron said. "If Jodie told everyone that you are planning something bad; I would say that it looks like a good opportunity to do a prank and make it your fault, Harry."
"Hmm, Ron, according to your theory, it seems like one of the Ravenclaws could have done it," Luna said thoughtfully.
"I think anybody from any other House could have known about Jodie's statements, too," thought Ginny.
"Yeah, well, it's not hard for me at all to imagine, let's say, Pansy doing such a prank," Ron added.
"Anyway, I think it's just a silly prank. Hermione will handle it, and I don't think we should take this situation so seriously. There usually happen a lot of such things at Hogwarts," Harry said calmly, not worrying much about it anymore.
Hermione returned to them only at dinner, when the meal was started quite a time ago. Jodie and Terry entered the Great Hall behind her.
"Well, there was a prank, you know," Hermione said wearily as she took her seat next to Ron. "Just think of it – someone had put the Trip Jinx on the stairs, but Jodie told everybody that only you, Harry, were to blame."
"Actually, we know it already. We met Luna in the library, she told us everything," Harry confirmed to her as she began to put a beef stew on her plate.
"It's crazy, isn't it? I simply told her again what we had already said to her in the morning – that we just happened to pass by there and just thought about visiting Luna, that's all. I removed the curse and reprimanded that Jodie for the fact that we were now practicing this exact jinx at Dawlish's classes, if she hasn't managed to notice this particular fact – so basically it could be done by any seventh-year. I told her to look for another rival. And then I told her to calm down with all her Quidditch things. It's been nine days since the game, and everyone but she has long forgotten about it already," Hermione said, outraged.
"You are blasting, Hermione." Ron chuckled at his girlfriend's passion, even though he was often one of those persons who didn't easily forget his not so good experiences – including in sports.
"Let that thing be, I'm worried more about how we'll find the Diadem right now," Harry said, at the end whispering very quietly.
"We already agreed that it's no use to waste the essence right now, until we haven't made an exact further search plan," Ginny recalled and drank a sip of juice.
"Of course, but what exactly are we going to do next?" Harry asked.
"We could start by discussing this subject in some quieter place," Hermione scolded her friends and, feeling hungry, started to devour her food on her plate.
When Harry went to sleep that night, he recalled all their conclusions of today. There were a number of difficulties. First, they didn't know for sure what exactly Hermione's spell had detected. Technically, it should be the concentrated energy of Hogwarts, which would be characteristic of an object of the Hogwarts founder, whole and undamaged. Why the signal showed the Headmaster's Office was clear for him, because all the relics of Hogwarts were there. For example, the Sorting Hat had once belonged to Gryffindor. And the Gryffindor's Sword was there, which was also a relic of a founder. Then there was this weak signal, which had led them to the stairs of the Ravenclaw Tower. As far as Harry remembered, in the Ravenclaw Tower, unlike other Houses, there was a sculpture of the founder. If it was made as a replica of Rowena Ravenclaw, it may have been able to give an amplified signal of Hogwarts energy. Considering this all, only one thing had become clear to him – they won't find anything this way. They needed another searching method.
We'll have to resort to the use of Voldemort's energy; it's no other option, Harry thought grimly, before he fell asleep.