Hermione tried several more times that evening to dissuade Ron from going, but he would not listen to a single word she spoke, even going so far as shoving her out of the way when she tried to talk to him outside of the Gryffindor Common Room. He seemed to be in an excited mood, and Harry even saw him reading outside of class, skimming through a book on duelling spells and animatedly instructing Raul on the best duelling tactics, something that he, too, was all too keen to listen to.

Raul and Ron went up to bed early, presumably so that they could be well-rested for the duel that may or may not actually happen. Harry, Hermione, and Neville sat in front of the fire, watching silently as the two of them went up the stairs to the dormitories.

'Do you think they'll really go?' Neville asked.

'I'm sure of it,' Hermione said grimly. 'Do you think Ron will pass up a chance to do something that he thinks is impressive?'

There was no need to answer that question, and after some another long stretch of silence, the three of them, too, went up to bed. Harry climbed into his four-poster and drew the curtains, trying to fall asleep but finding it difficult over Ron's snores. He wondered if there was some sort of spell that could block out all sound from outside his curtains – if there was, he wanted to learn it. Thinking that there must be, his mind then drifted to speculation over what else magic might be able to do, his ideas growing ever more fantastical, and soon, he was thinking of teleporting to the moon, or flying freely like a bird above the oceans, or perhaps even raising the dead.

It was somewhere in those thoughts that Harry drifted to sleep, for the next thing he knew, he had been woken up by loud footsteps and excited whispering. Groggily, he rubbed his eyes and opened his curtains a chink, wanting to see if it was already day out, but when he looked out of the window, it was still pitch-dark outside.

The footsteps began moving towards the door, and it was at this point that Harry realised that they must have been Ron and Raul, heading to the duel. He heard the door open softly, then footsteps fading as they descended down the spiral staircase.

Harry, on impulse, decided to follow them – though only as far as the Common Room – wanting to see whether they really were going to head to the duel. He put on his shoes and stood up from his bed, drawing the curtains quietly and pocketing his wand on impulse before tiptoeing down the stairs behind the two of them, trying to remain as silent as possible.

Suddenly, Harry heard the sound of whispers emanating from the Common Room – only it was not the same whisper that one spoke in when trying to keep what they were saying a secret. Instead, it was a whisper that resembled a shouting match, only conducted at a lower volume. As quickly as he could, Harry descended down the remainder of the stairs and peeked around the corner.

Standing in the middle of the room were Hermione, Ron, and Raul. Even in the dim light provided by the fireplace, Harry could see that both Hermione's and Ron's faces were red with anger as they snapped at one another in hisses.

'For the last time, Granger,' Ron snarled. 'Don't tell me what to do!'

'I have to say something when you're going to put yourself and the entire House at risk!' Hermione retorted. 'You're going to something that you know is a set-up, and when you're caught, you're going to lose Gryffindor all the points that we've gained this week!'

'Oh, of course, you only care about that,' Ron growled. 'You don't care that I'm going to a duel, no. Miss Goody-Two-Shoes only wants to make sure that Gryffindor doesn't lose points.'

'Ron, I don't just – '

Harry stepped out into the Common Room, and instantly, both Hermione and Ron turned to look at him. Hermione's face turned from one of anger to one of surprise, while Ron tried his hardest to school his features into something more amicable, something that he was failing at quite miserably.

'Harry,' Ron said, putting a rather unsettling smile on his face, 'have you changed your mind? I'd be glad to be your second if you – '

'You really are going, then?' Harry asked, feeling quite annoyed. 'And is there ever a need to be calling people "goody-two-shoes"?'

'Of course I'm going. I won't let him just win!' Ron replied pointedly, eyes narrowing at Harry. 'And don't lecture me, Harry. I'm just telling Hermione what she is.'

'You know it could be a trap, right, Ron?' Harry tried to reason. 'He could've tipped off Snape…or the caretaker…or any teacher. You – '

Ron waved his hand nonchalantly. 'Don't believe everything Granger says. Malfoy will show up, arrogant prick that he is. Come on, Raul, let's go. Harry doesn't want to come. His loss for being afraid.'

'Don't go, Ron,' Hermione pleaded one last time. 'Isn't that a possibility that – '

She did not get to finish her sentence, for Ron pushed her roughly out of the way. Hermione yelped as she staggered back several steps, barely catching her balance on the back of a chair. Ron, meanwhile, almost ran towards the portrait hole, Raul following him. He jerked it open, and the two of them stormed out of the Gryffindor Common Room, slamming the painting behind him. Harry could hear the Fat Lady's complaints on the other side of the wall intermingle with the muffled sounds of footsteps on the stone floors.

'Are you okay?' Harry asked Hermione, walking to her.

'I'm fine,' she replied, brushing off her pyjamas. 'I can't believe those two! Ron especially! How can someone be so thick to not even consider the possibility that this could be a set-up?'

Harry was not in much of a mood to play devil's advocate for Ron after he had just insulted both him and Hermione. 'You know how he is,' he said rather savagely. 'He'll stick with his first impression of something to the bitter end, even if everyone else tells him that he's wrong.'

Hermione threw her hands in the air. 'I wish people were less…less stubborn about everything!'

Harry did not voice the opinion that Hermione, too, could sometimes be rather stubborn, for this seemed like exactly the wrong time to say something like that. Instead, he stared at the portrait hole, not saying anything. Ron and Raul's footsteps were no longer audible, and Harry wondered if they had already made it to the centre corridor on the first floor.

They stood in awkward silence for many minutes before Hermione decided to take a seat on one of the armchairs by the now-extinguished fireplace. Harry, thinking that he should keep her company – and finding it far too awkward to simply leave, anyway – sat down on the chair opposite her. Ten minutes had passed since Raul and Ron had left. Then it became fifteen, then neared twenty, and the portrait hole remained stoically closed.

It was at the twenty-minute mark that Hermione finally broke the silence. 'Should we say something?' she asked, no longer angry but now nervous. 'What if something happens to them? What if Malfoy set a trap that was dangerous? What if they got hurt?'

Harry had to take several seconds to process what she had said, absorbed in his own sleep-obscured thoughts. 'We should,' he agreed absentmindedly, though he too was genuinely worried that something might have been up. Were they actually fighting a real duel, after all? And if they were, how long did a duel last? It certainly could not be twenty minutes, could it?

'Who do we tell, though?' he voiced his immediate next thought. 'If we went to Professor McGonagall, we'd all get in trouble for being out of bed past curfew. Where even is her office? I don't think it's in the Transfiguration classroom.'

Hermione shook her head. 'I don't know,' she said quietly. 'But we really should let someone know what's going on, past curfew or not. What if they're actually in danger?'

Perhaps in another context, Harry would have been astonished that Hermione had made that statement, but now, he simply nodded. 'We could go to Professor Cauverina,' he suggested. 'We know where her office is. Maybe she could help.'

Hermione looked at Harry with a thoughtful expression on her face before nodding. 'Do you think she'll still be awake?'

'We'll have to go there to find out, I guess,' Harry said. 'Let's go now. If there's something bad happening…it's better a teacher knows about it sooner than later.'

Hermione looked nervous for a moment, but then she steeled her resolve and nodded, standing up from her chair. Harry stood and followed her to the portrait hole, which she opened slowly and softly, not disturbing the portrait of the Fat Lady on the other side, who had already fallen asleep again in the time since Ron and Raul had stormed off.

The two of them descended the spiral staircase from the Gryffindor Tower as quickly as they could and stepped through the door onto the landing to the main staircase. The moving staircases, magically sensing their presence, began to move, meeting the landing and grinding to a halt. Harry and Hermione rushed down the staircase onto the landing below, and the next staircase moved to meet them, carrying them down to the next level.

The castle at this time of night was almost creepily empty. There was not a soul to be seen. The patrolling Prefects must have long gone to bed, perhaps not expecting any students to get back out of bed at past midnight. If he was still a little kid, Harry would not have wandered around such a place at night, fearing all the things that came out at night to haunt humans which he sometimes saw on the television serials that Dudley watched, but magic seemed to give him a blanket of comfort. If they really existed – and he now knew that some did – he reasoned that wizards would probably have long understood them.

'What floor are we on?' Hermione asked as they waited for yet another flight of moving staircases to move into place.

Harry looked around. There were no floor markers on the landing. If there was something that annoyed him about wizards, it would have to be the lack of common sense that they seemed to exhibit sometimes. Would it really be so hard to put up numbers at each of the landings so that they at least knew where they were, instead of having to commit every aspect of the changing castle to memory?

'I don't know,' Harry replied. He looked up. They seemed to be four or five floors down now. 'Maybe…the fourth floor?'

Hermione nodded. 'Seems about right. But has nobody ever thought of putting up some signs so that we can tell where in the castle we are?' she grumbled.

'My thoughts exactly,' Harry murmured.

The staircase slid into place, flush with the landing, and the two of them descended onto the third-floor landing. Keeping as much distance as they could from the right-hand corridor, for neither of them wanted to die a gruesome death, as Dumbledore had warned on the first day, they waited for the next flight of stairs to slide into place. As he waited, he seemed to catch a glimpse of a pair of yellow eyes coming from the right-side corridor on the landing below. Harry blinked, trying to make sure that he was not just seeing things, but when he opened his eyes again, the eyes were gone.

They climbed down onto the second-floor landing and made a turn into the right-hand corridor. As they walked down the corridor, making sure to keep to the darker side so that if there was still someone out, patrolling the corridors, they might not see them from a distance. Behind Harry, he heard the grinding sound of the staircase behind them sliding back into its resting position along the walls of the stairwell.

'Are we on the right floor?' Hermione asked. Harry looked around, and the corridor did indeed seem unfamiliar somehow. The colour of the bricks of the wall were slightly off from what Harry remembered, and around several of the torch holders were strings of cobwebs.

'I'm not sure,' Harry said, suddenly feeling goosebumps appear down his arm, for the corridor resembled too disturbingly one of those haunted houses from the movies. 'Should we go back?'

'Maybe we should,' Hermione breathed, stopping and turning around. 'Come on.'

They turned around and walked briskly back the way they came, and as they neared the landing, Harry heard the sound of a staircase moving into place. Harry peeked out, thinking that it was the one that they had come from.

It was, however, not. Instead of a staircase that took them back up to the next floor, the staircase that had just docked was one that had led up from the lower floor. Walking up on it, breathing heavily, was a man with a brightly burning lantern who had a cat by his feet – a cat with the same yellow eyes that Harry had thought that he had seen in this very corridor.

'It's Mister Filch,' Hermione breathed, and a fright settled into Harry. He had never had an encounter with the caretaker before, but judging by the stories that older students – especially Ron's brothers, Fred and George – told in the Common Room, being caught out of bed by him was not an experience worth having, especially with his threats – even if empty – that he would use medieval torture methods on students.

'Run!' Harry hissed, and he and Hermione shot back down the corridor, away from the landing. When they got to the end of the corridor, however, they found that it led nowhere – only a single, dusty wooden door stood at the end. Over the sounds of their panting, they could hear Mr Filch's approaching footsteps, the meowing of his cat, and his excited muttering to himself.

'Through the door, quick,' Hermione whispered. She tried the handle, but to their shared dismay, found it locked by a large, three-keyholed lock.

'What do we do now?' Harry asked desperately. 'Do you know a spell to unlock locks?'

'I read about one last week,' Hermione replied. 'But it could only unlock very simple locks. Locks that hadn't been enchanted against it. I don't know if it'll work.'

'Just try it,' Harry begged, seeing the torch light of Mr Filch's lantern nearing the corner behind them.

Hermione pulled out her wand and closed her eyes, concentrating. 'Alohomora,' she whispered.

Unexpectedly, there were three clicks, and the lock fell open. He exchanged a look with Hermione and she, too, had a look of surprise on her face. Their surprise was short-lived, however, as just then, they heard Mr Filch's footsteps around the corner. In one motion, Hermione turned the door handle and pushed the door open. Without a second's hesitation, the two of them stepped inside and closed the door behind themselves.

It was a dark, odd-smelling room on the other side. Harry could hear a gentle whistle that sounded a bit like a breeze blowing through. Behind him, on the other side of the door, Harry could hear Mr Filch's approaching footsteps, his mumbling growing clearer as he neared.

'Will we catch a third, my sweet?' Filch said in a gravelly voice. 'Or better yet, a fourth? I hope they will be Gryffindors. Don't you, my sweet? They'll lose even more points tonight than they already had.'

Harry heard Hermione stiffen against the door. Harry, too, knew what Filch's muttering had meant. Malfoy had indeed tipped off Filch, and Ron and Raul had fallen straight into his trap. He felt a sudden burst of thankfulness towards Hermione and Neville for talking him out of going to the duel, but that mood was quickly dampened by fear as Filch got even nearer. He must be just on the other side of the door by now, Harry thought.

'They aren't here,' Filch muttered. 'Where did they go, my sweet? Into the forbidden room? Do you think they know what is on the other side, my sweet? Oh…I think not…I hope not… It will be entertaining to sweep out their bodies in the morning…what is left of them, at least. Let's go, my sweet.'

With that, Filch turned around and started back towards the landing. Soon, his footsteps decayed altogether. There was a grinding from the movement of the staircases, and then, it was completely silent in the room. Silent, that was, except for the sound of the wind, which seemed to have grown louder than before.

'Lumos,' Hermione whispered, and the end of her wand lit up with a pale blue hue, illuminating the room. Harry pulled his wand out of his pocket, too, and lit it.

He looked around the room. It seemed to be like any other classroom at first glance, just smaller. There were, however, no windows on any of the walls, and no furniture. The floor appeared to not have been swept in a long time, and the same could be said for the appearance of the walls.

Then, Harry's eyes settled on the centre of the room. At first, it looked as if there was a pile of large items covered by an equally large furry blanket. But the next moment, Harry noticed the nose, the closed eyes, the three heads, and the paws with its sharp claws, one of which laid over a trap door of some kind. It was at that moment that Harry had realised where they were – in their attempts to avoid it, they had wandered directly into the forbidden right-hand corridor on the third floor.

'What is that?' Harry breathed, his blood running cold as he remembered what Filch had said about sweeping whatever was left of their bodies out of the room in the morning. He took a step forward out of curiosity, bending down slightly and examining the beast.

'I don't know,' Hermione replied, also stepping forward, her eyes focused on the paw over the trap door. 'But I don't think we should try to make friends.'

Suddenly, the beast shifted its paw further over the trap door, and Harry instinctively jumped back, his back crashing against the wooden door with a thump. That, however, only served to wake the three-headed dog beast up even further. One of its eyelids shot open, revealing a great brown eye. Upon seeing the light cast by Harry and Hermione's two wands, its remaining eyes shot open, and it stirred, letting out a loud, warm breath.

'Hermione!' Harry cried in alarm. 'It's awake!'

Hermione snapped out of her trance. Her eyes shot up from the trapdoor and stared directly into one of the creature's eyes. It took her a moment to process what was going on, but when she did, she let out a loud shriek of fear.

'Run!' she shouted, as the beast began to rise from its prone position, letting out a bark as it did so. Harry turned around and threw open the door, jumping out back into the corridor. Hermione rushed out after him and slammed the door shut behind her. Back inside the room, the creature's barks grew louder, and Harry could hear its paws slamming against the wooden planks of the door.

'Let's go before it breaks the door down!' Hermione cried, and the two of them sprinted down the length of the corridor, even faster than they had when they were evading Filch. Behind them, the creature continued pawing the door, and its barks, despite emanating from behind the door, echoed through the corridor.

The seconds that they spent waiting for the staircase up were some of the most nerve-wracking that Harry had ever experienced, for at any second, Harry expected the beast to burst out of its room and run down the corridor before making mincemeat of them. Even as the staircase docked and they tore up towards the fourth floor, Harry's heart pounded nervously in his chest. Only when the staircase had pulled away from the fourth-floor landing did Harry let out a breath of relief. There was no way that the creature could eat them now.

'What was that thing?' Harry asked breathlessly. Hermione, however, did not answer, simply looking dazed, as the next flight of stairs docked.

Neither talked on the walk back to Gryffindor Tower. Harry's heart had stopped pounding by the time that they climbed through the portrait hole back into the Common Room – irritating the Fat Lady, who they had had to wake up – but he still could not get the image of the creature's eyes out of his head. Finally, at the bottom of the staircase to the dormitories, Hermione broke the silence.

'What was that thing?' she repeated Harry's question from earlier, still sounding a little shaken. 'It looked like a dog with three heads.'

Harry shook his head, shuddering a little at the reminder. 'I don't know. I was hoping you might know.'

'I don't,' Hermione said. 'Maybe we could look in the library to see if there are any books that might be able to tell us what it was,' she added after a pause.

Harry nodded. 'Good idea,' he replied absently, still stupefied by the encounter.

They stood at the bottom of the staircase for a little while longer, and suddenly, Harry felt unreasonably tired. It seemed like the running, combined with the late hour, had taken a toll on him.

'I…uh…I think I'll go to bed,' he said, a little awkwardly. 'I feel tired.'

Hermione yawned. 'I think I will, too.'

Harry nodded. 'Well…good night.'

'Good night to you, too.'

Harry climbed the stairs back up to the First-Year Boys' Dormitory and opened the door. Ron and Raul were both back in bed already, both asleep in their robes, not having closed the curtains around their beds. Harry, having gone on this whole adventure in his pyjamas, placed his wand back on the bedside table and laid down in his bed, closing the curtains behind him. He was asleep before he knew it.


Harry rose later than he ever had at Hogwarts the next morning, but considering that it was a Saturday, he did not feel much of an urgency to get out of bed, anyway. He laid in bed for almost half an hour before finally deciding to get up, brushing his teeth and getting dressed at a leisurely pace. Some time in the night, the curtains around Ron and Raul's beds had been drawn, and they were still closed, and the pair's soft snores could be heard emanating from behind them.

He went down to breakfast, and when he arrived in the Great Hall, Hermione was already there, sitting with Neville and reading a newspaper. Harry made his way over and took a seat next to Hermione, saying good morning to the pair of them.

'Good morning,' Hermione replied, suppressing a yawn. 'Slept well?'

Harry shrugged. 'Could've been better.'

He was not sure whether Hermione wanted to discuss what had happened last night in Neville's presence, so he decided not to talk about it if she did not. They exchanged some small talk about the weather and the weekend as Harry loaded some food onto his plate, the two of them going back to reading the newspaper.

'Did something happen?' Harry asked, finding their intense interest in the news that morning a little out of the ordinary.

'Yeah,' Hermione replied, passing Harry the newspaper. 'The Gringotts case. It's on the page on the left.'

Harry took the newspaper and looked over at the left-hand page. At the top, in bold type, was the headline Trial in Gringotts Case Begins: Prussian Suspect to Be Tried in Absentia.

Charges were brought last afternoon in the Ejwent Asztyrajom against the principal accused in the Gringotts Break-In of 4 August. Although the proceedings were closed to the public and press, the Head Warlock of the Ejwent Asztyrajom, current Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, named the charges that the suspects were accused of in a statement for the press last evening.

'The Ministry is committed to maintaining our relations with the goblins of Gringotts,' Mr Fudge said. 'As such, all transgressions of the Goblin-Wizard Treaties will be punished severely and appropriately. The accused, Miss Anna Vesnova and Miss Ilse Eisele, have been found to have acted in breach of the articles of the 1772 Act of Ratification of the Wizard-Goblin Peace, and as such, have been charged with meddling in the internal affairs of Gringotts and with attempts to sabotage the safety of Gringotts. The Department of Security will be pushing the Council for life imprisonment in Azkaban for Miss Vesnova, while Miss Eisele, as she is additionally criminally liable for her flight, will face the possibility of the Dementor's Kiss.'

The 4 August break-in represented the first successful break-in attempt against Gringotts since the 1839 Great Break-In and Fire, which brought wizards and the goblins of Gringotts to the brink of another war, one which was only defused when the Ministry offered massive concessions to the goblins of Gringotts. In light of this development, the Spokesgoblin of Gringotts, Urnhest, has also released a statement on behalf of the bank.

'The Ministry of Magic has done the minimum in safeguarding goblin-wizard relations,' he claimed in a short written statement.

The Department of Security has also made more information about the case, target, and suspects available to the general wizarding public. Miss Vesnova, the Ministry reveals, has been in Britain for one year and four months, holds a Matura with High Distinction with specialisation in alchemy from the G. E. Rasputin All-Russian Koldovstvorets, and has been studying towards a Magister in potions at the Snowdonia School of Magic while working as a potioneer with Shafiq Potions and Elixirs. The Department of Security believes that her specialist knowledge gave her an instrumental role in the break-in and the breaching of the Gringotts defensive magic.

The other suspect, Miss Eisele, has been residing in Britain for three years, holds a Baccalauréat from the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic in France. In Britain, she was a co-worker of Miss Vesnova's at Shafiq Potions and Elixirs, working in quality control and fraud-prevention enchantments. The DMLE believes that the two accomplices met through work and proceeded to develop their plot together. In spite of the evidence that the DMLE has presented, the Prussian Reichszaubereiministerium continues to refuse Miss Eisele's extradition, and has rejected all offers of mediated talks.

Additionally, it was also revealed that the vault in question belonged to a 'close associate' of Representative to the ICW and Headmaster of Hogwarts School Albus P. W. B. Dumbledore, but its owners and previous contents are unknown to the public at this time.

The trial in the Ejwent Asztyrajom will begin exactly thirty-one days from today, when the extradition request to the Reichszaubereiministerium for Miss Eisele will expire.

'What happens now?' Harry asked, setting down the paper.

'Well, they'll be tried,' Neville replied. 'It'll be before the Ejwent Asztyrajom. It's pretty simple, really. The Department of Security will state their evidence, then the accused will present their version of events, and the Law Warlocks will decide the verdict and sentence.'

Hermione leaned forward, furrowing her brow. 'Wait, so the trial is just the prosecution and defence stating their evidence?'

Neville nodded. 'Pretty much, yeah.'

'Do they not have access to legal counsel?' Hermione asked. 'Are there no barristers in the magical world?'

'Are there no what?' Neville asked, confused.

'Barristers,' Hermione explained. 'It's someone who defends you at a trial. They advocate for your case. Do wizards not have those?'

'I…I don't think so?' Neville replied. 'Though maybe they exist, and I just don't know about them – Gran would be the better person to ask – but as far as I know, it's as simple as that.'

'How is the accused supposed to defend themselves, then?' Harry asked. Aunt Petunia had liked legal shows, and Harry had been forced to watch along often enough to know that defendants always had a barrister to defend them in court.

'They just tell the truth,' Neville answered, confused, too. 'Isn't that how it's done in the muggle world, too?

Hermione shook her head. 'No, it's not. The defendant is allowed to have a barrister represent them. And if they can't afford a barrister, the government is supposed to provide them with one.'

Neville had a faraway look on his face as he tried to process that. 'Oh…that, odd…'

'The Ejwent Asztyrajom doesn't sound very fair,' Harry observed.

'Gran doesn't think so either,' Neville said, surprising Harry. 'She says that its verdicts are completely political. "Whatever Fudge wants, Fudge gets," she always says.'

Harry glanced at the newspaper. 'And this Fudge…he obviously seems to want them to be guilty.'

Neville nodded darkly in agreement. 'He often does.'

'But why?' Hermione asked.

Neville sighed. 'I don't know.'

They did not talk much for the rest of breakfast, each no doubt in their own thoughts about the trial. Harry wondered what it would be like to be the accused, facing an unfair trial in front of a biased Minister. When he finished his food, he took to staring up at the Head Table. The centre seat that was usually occupied by Headmaster Dumbledore, he noticed, was empty. Snape and Quirrell, meanwhile, were uncharacteristically sitting next to one another. Snape looked to be deep in thought, while Quirrell was squirming occasionally, an expression of extreme discomfort on his face. Harry could not blame him for having that reaction in Snape's presence.

Neville left after breakfast to go to Professor Cauverina for help with a homework, which was just as well, for Harry and Hermione made their way to the library in search of answers. Harry had not yet been in the Hogwarts library, but if Hermione's loud ravings in the Common Room after her first visit were to be believed, it was a magnificent space, filled from wall to wall with shelves of books.

The library was located on the first floor, and Harry followed Hermione up one flight of the familiar staircases to the first-floor landing, before proceeding down the short left-hand corridor. Directly ahead, on the end wall of the corridor, was a set of large wooden doors, decorated with elaborate golden handles, while two identical shields of Hogwarts were engraved directly into the wood.

'Here it is,' Hermione said, pushing open the doors. Harry stepped inside after her and looked around the space. Even at first glance, it was truly as magnificent as Hermione had spoken about. Bookshelves stood densely as far as the eye could see in front of him and to his left and right. In the centre of the library, meanwhile, was a vast reading space, around which were several staircases that went up to two more mezzanine levels, all, too, ringed with bookshelves.

'You'll need to check in,' Hermione called from his left. Harry looked over to, and saw that she was standing by a small desk of sorts, on top of which was a book and a black stone. 'Just tap your wand against the stone.'

Harry walked over to the table and took out his wand, tapping its tip against the surface of the stone. Nothing happened for a second, but then, a quill picked itself up from the desk, floated over to the open pages of the book, and wrote, in a neat cursive, the name Harry Potter.

'Now we can go,' Hermione said as she almost skipped into the reading space. 'We'll need to look in the Magical Creatures section. That should be somewhere on the first floor. Follow me.'

Hermione ran to the nearest staircase and dashed up to the next level, Harry following her without direction. Once on the first floor, Hermione continued to lead Harry briskly past the rows of bookshelves, occasionally doubling back. After some minutes of searching, they finally found themselves in front of a bookshelf labelled 'Magical Beasts and Creatures'.

'This is it,' Hermione said. 'If I remember correctly, there should be two shelves of books dedicated to magical creatures. We're bound to find something.'

Harry nodded, impressed. 'How do you know where everything is? This place is so enormous.'

'Just spent a lot of time here,' Hermione replied with a shrug. 'Let's start looking. Let's collect the books that you think could have the information we need and we'll read them through later.'

'Uh…what exactly should we be looking for?'

'Books about the thing we saw last night,' Hermione answered in a manner that indicated that she thought that the answer was obvious.

'Yeah, but there're hundreds of books here,' Harry noted. 'It'll take forever to search them all.'

'Oh.' Hermione thought to herself for a minute. 'Well, we know what the creature is roughly,' she said. 'It's not something that flies, nor does it live underwater. It's not something like a dragon, or a chimera. If you see a book all about something that you know it isn't, then we probably don't need to look in there.'

'And size, maybe?' Harry suggested, seeing Hermione's line of thinking. 'If it's a book about…I don't know, small creatures…then we probably shouldn't look there.'

'Good point,' Hermione said. 'And obviously, if it's a book about non-magical creatures, we can skip it, too. And, I mean, honestly, just use common sense.'

They split up and began looking, each searching a different side of the shelf. With their system, Harry found himself eliminating the vast majority of books by just a glance at their spine, and occasionally by skimming their summary pages. Books such as Monsters of the Deep, A Visual Guide to Dragon Identification, or A Survey of Non-Magical Wildlife of the New World were thrown out immediately, while other books, such as Magical Creatures of the Treetops or Cave Dwellers of the Caucasus were rejected, too, as Harry thought it unlikely that such an enormous three-headed dog-like beast could live its entire life in trees or in caves in the mountains.

Despite eliminating the vast majority of the books, the weight of those that he did decide to pick up was already getting rather heavy – and he was only about an eighth of the way through the first bookshelf. In his arms were books such as Great Beasts of the Far North, Magical Creatures of the Indian Subcontinent, and Mountain Dwellers: Legends and Reality.

Harry had only been searching for less than ten minutes, but his arms were already growing sore. At that point, he noticed a thick book on the shelf, on the spine of which was written An Encyclopædia of Great Magical Beasts of the World.

At once, Harry was intrigued – the book looked exactly like something that they should be looking for. He looked down on the already-heavy stacks of books in his arms, wondering if he could or should pick up yet another book to carry back. After some deliberation, however, he decided to pick it up despite the soreness in his arms, acting on his hunch that it might be useful.

He walked around the bookshelf to where Hermione was, the weight of the books making him pant even with the short walk. When he saw her, he noticed that she, too, had a tall stack of books in her arms.

'Should we go read these first and come back later if we need to?' Harry asked.

Hermione turned around, her face pink in exertion. 'I think so,' she said in a strained voice.

The two of them walked slowly back down the stairs, being careful to not drop the books on the way down. Finding the nearest table in the reading space in the centre of the library, they set down the books with a thump, both shaking their arms to try to rid the soreness.

'Where should we start?' Hermione asked, sitting down.

Harry pointed to the encyclopaedia at the top of his stack. 'I think we should start with this one.'

Hermione stood up and took the book off the top of the stack, opening it and reading the first pages. 'This book looks good,' she agreed. 'It might be a lot to read, though.'

'Are there pictures?' Harry asked hopefully, thinking back to the encyclopaedias that he had seen in school. 'We could look at those if there are.'

Hermione flipped through the pages. 'There are some,' she replied. 'But they're sketches, and not all of them look very good. Worse, not every page has one.'

'I guess we'll have to do it the hard way, then,' Harry lamented with a sigh.

Hermione nodded sadly. 'It looks like it. Well, let's start, then.'

They opened the book and began to read, skipping chapters as soon as they knew for sure that it was not what they were looking for. The As yielded nothing. Neither abarimons, acromantulas, ashwinders, nor any other A-creatures were remotely close to what the three-headed dog had been.

The Bs also yielded nothing. The creature had most certainly not been a basilisk – for which Harry was rather thankful – nor could it have been a banshee or bowtruckle. By the time they reached the end of the section, Harry checked the clock. It had only been less than an hour since they had started, but thanks to the repetitive reading and lack of success, Harry already felt like half a day had passed.

'Harry Potter with the bookworm?' suddenly came an unwelcome voice. 'Is that really what you want to be doing on a Saturday afternoon?'

He looked up, his face no doubt crossed with irritation, to see Pansy standing in front of his table. On her right side stood Daphne, the classic haughty and aloof expression on her face, and to her left was Tracey, whose more timid expression was, as always, rather out of place with the other two girls.

Harry could feel no charity towards any of them for their unwelcome interruption and jibes, especially with what had just happened the day before on the Quidditch Field. 'What's wrong? What else should I be doing?' he asked, rather brusquely. 'And aren't you also in the library?'

'We were about to do our Potions homework,' Pansy replied. 'Care to join us?'

Harry swallowed his annoyance. 'I've already done my Potions homework for the weekend,' he said, trying to sound as calm as possible. 'And I'm working on something right now, anyway.'

'Well, if you ever want to ditch the…know-it-all,' Daphne said with a rather arrogant glance towards Hermione, 'you'd be most welcome to join us.'

Harry had to suppress a snort – as if he had any intention of spending time with a group of people who reminded him so much of Dudley's gang, only possibly worse. 'I'll consider it,' he said, forcing a polite smile on his face, wanting nothing less than for them to leave so that he and Hermione could return to their research.

Pansy nodded in acceptance of Harry's reply and led the rest of the group away. When they were out of earshot, Harry turned back to Hermione, who had a worried look on her face.

'Are you okay?' Harry asked.

Hermione shrugged, schooling her features. 'I'm fine. Let's just go back to what we were doing.'

They turned back to their book, starting the Cs. Thankfully, the first entry, Centaur, had an accompanying drawing, which clearly did not match what they remembered from the previous night, and they were able to quickly skip past onto the next entry, Cerberus.

'Look at this, Harry,' Hermione said excitedly after a second of reading, pointing at the first paragraph. 'The Cerberus, which the muggles of ancient Greece believed guarded the underworld, is a magical creature native to the Balkan Peninsula and Anatolia. It takes the form of a large, three-headed dog, typically about five to nine Standard Yards in height.' She looked up at Harry. 'Doesn't that sound exactly like what we saw?'

Harry read a little more. The Cerberus's fur was generally between grey to black, the book stated. He had not been able to see the colour of the dog's fur very well in the wand light last night, but thinking back, it seemed to have matched the colour. The book also noted in the same paragraph that the Cerberus fell asleep to music, and that its behaviour, when encountering an unfamiliar person, could be aggressive. Harry could not help but shudder – he was glad that they had gotten out of that room when they had.

'It does,' Harry agreed. 'Do you think this is it? That the creature was a Cerberus?'

'It looks like it,' Hermione said. 'I remember reading about the Cerberus in Greek mythology. I didn't think about it, but when I read it in the book, it made sense. I can't think of another creature that looks anything like it.'

'If it is a Cerberus, then what does that mean?' Harry asked. 'Why would Hogwarts keep such a creature in the school? And behind a door that anyone could open?'

Hermione chewed her lower lip. 'Did you see the trap door?'

'Under its paw?'

Hermione nodded. 'Do you think that it could be…guarding something? Something hidden under the trap door?'

'What could it possibly be guarding?' Harry asked. The two of them thought about it in silence for a long while, before, suddenly, something clicked in Harry's mind.

'The vault in Gringotts that had been broken into,' he breathed.

Hermione turned to look at him, a confused look on her face. 'What about it?'

'Remember what the newspaper said?' Harry asked, his voice quick in excitement and his heart pounding in his chest. 'How the vault that was broken into belonged to a close associate of Headmaster Dumbledore's, and that whatever was in that vault had been removed just before the break-in?'

Hermione nodded, and instantly, her eyes lit up in realisation. 'You're saying that whatever is under the trap door…'

'Was what used to be in that vault,' Harry finished.

There was another long, stunned pause, both probably thinking about what exactly could be hidden under that trap door at that exact moment. Whatever it was, Harry thought, it must be important, or perhaps dangerous, or perhaps both. Why else would someone break into Gringotts to steal it?

'If it's important enough to be guarded by a Cerberus,' Hermione said, breaking the silence, 'why is it being hidden in a school, and not somewhere else?'

'It was hidden somewhere else,' Harry pointed out. 'But someone got past its defences.'

'But a school…'

Harry sighed, looking out the window. It did seem rather reckless to hide something like that in Hogwarts, along with thousands of students. 'Maybe Headmaster Dumbledore thought that he should keep whatever it was close,' he postulated, playing the devil's advocate. 'From how everyone talks about him, he seems to be an abnormally great wizard with an equal reputation. When I went to Diagon Alley with him that morning of the break-in, so many people stared at him as we walked around.'

'You think Dumbledore thinks that whoever's after whatever it is will be afraid to make an attempt on Hogwarts with him around?'

'It's possible,' Harry replied.

'But…' Hermione said quietly after a long period of thought, 'if the people behind the robbery were already caught, then why would the headmaster move it…unless…'

'He thinks they weren't the only ones?'

Hermione nodded. 'It must be. No…there's another possibility. Maybe…maybe they weren't responsible in the first place.'

The two stared at one another. 'If they really weren't responsible, then what do we do?' Harry asked. 'We can't let an innocent woman get sent to prison for life.'

Hermione sighed, staring off into the distance. 'I don't know what we can do. Honestly, this is just a theory that depends on one thing being true. Maybe they really are guilty. Maybe they aren't. How do we know for sure? It'd be like asking Scotland Yard to call off an investigation based on a speculative theory. And if Headmaster Dumbledore moved the…whatever it was…knowing that they're innocent or that there are more accomplices, then he must be doing something about it, with how important he seems to be.'

'He wasn't at breakfast this morning,' Harry recalled. 'Do you think…'

Hermione sighed. 'If that is the truth, then we can only hope.'

They cleaned up their books, putting them back into place on the shelves. The pair left the library in a more thoughtful and sombre mood than they had when they had come. Harry had known that the magical world was not all 'sunshine and rainbows' since the day that Headmaster Dumbledore had told him how his parents had truly died, but he now felt it at a closer level. Not only were there dangerous beasts and likely dangerous criminals still on the loose, but also the possibility of someone being put in prison for a crime that they did not commit.

'Harry?' Hermione suddenly asked as they climbed the stairs to Gryffindor Tower.

'Yeah?'

'Are you really going to join Pansy Parkinson and those girls? They didn't seem – '

'No!' Harry interrupted, disgusted at the mere idea. 'No! Why would I ever? I have nothing in common with them, and they just insulted you multiple times!'

'Oh,' Hermione said in a small voice. 'Well…I mean, they tried to be nice – '

Harry shook his head. 'They insulted you, and then ten seconds later, they pretend to be nice to me because…they think I'm "famous" or something.'

'I can tell, Hermione,' he added darkly. 'It's completely different from you…or Neville or Dean or… You…uh…you're not pretending. That's the…uh…difference.'

Hermione's face flushed, but a glad smile came over her face as they ascended the rest of the steps to the top of the Gryffindor Tower. Harry, too, felt a new, different sense of happiness.