POV of Parvati Patil

I only woke up to Hermione's alarm, having slept so deeply. Usually, I had the habit of waking up just before alarms, but that morning I felt so tired and drained that I had to really pull myself together to actually get up. We had only arrived in the dormitory after 3, which meant we had only about 4 hours of sleep, and it was clearly noticeable as Hermione, Veatrix, and I dragged ourselves out of our beds.

Of course, I quickly noticed that Ariana was missing, which surprised me greatly. Only Lavender seemed well-rested and in a good mood. She had slept so deeply and soundly the previous night that she actually hadn't noticed our absence and shook her head at us as we all got dressed sleepily.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, amused. "You look like you've been out half the night or something..." When none of us made any attempt to contradict her, but merely looked at each other, not knowing what to tell her, Lavender continued, addressing Hermione, whom she rightly considered the most sensible of us:

"Please tell me this is just a bad joke...?" When Hermione sighed and admitted that she was right, Lavender looked at us both incredulously and shocked at the same time and left the dormitory without another word.

We found Ariana alone in an armchair in front of the fireplace in the common room. In response to my questioning look, she explained that she hadn't been able to sleep and had therefore been there for over an hour so as not to accidentally wake any of us. She looked as tired as I felt, and I immediately knew that she was already blaming herself for not stopping me from leaving the dormitory. It wasn't her fault; I would have gone anyway. Yes, maybe I wouldn't have been caught alone, and even if I had been, at least they wouldn't have been complicit in my losing points. I felt terribly guilty for allowing them to come along.

Breakfast was hell. I would have preferred to rush out of the hall immediately to avoid it all, but I was quite hungry, so I sat down at the table between Hermione and Ariana and opposite James and Ron. There was a bright uproar at the Gryffindor table, as no one had failed to notice that our house had lost over a hundred points since the previous evening. Although no one knew who was responsible, we felt so guilty that we didn't dare look at anyone. Silently, we concentrated on our plates and bowls of cereal and tried to block out the agitated conversations of the other Gryffindors.

I just hoped they wouldn't find out too soon that we were to blame for the whole thing, as I noticed how much they already hated the unknown students who had so easily lost the hard-earned points. Even the Weasley twins, who were often not innocent themselves when points suddenly went missing, seemed to no longer find any fun in this, as they had never lost so many points at once with their pranks. I heard them complaining about so much "stupidity to get caught." That hurt to hear because I actually got along very well with them.

We were lucky that no one paid attention to us and no one suspected that we had anything to do with it. James seemed to be the only one who noticed that something was wrong with us, at least he looked at us in confusion as we sat there like a huge pile of misery and barely ate anything.

In History class, I just lay with my head on the desk and was glad not to have to speak to anyone. I don't think I've ever felt as lousy as I did that day. I didn't even want to imagine what would happen if the others found out that we had lost the points. And through such an incredibly stupid action... I also owed James an explanation. I was sure he cared less about the points, but he would probably resent me for not letting him in on it. But I just couldn't bring myself to tell him about the duel. If he had come with us, we would have lost even more points and the others would have been angry with him too.

In my head, I went through the events of the previous night again: When that figure appeared, I immediately knew what to do. Everything had happened as Ariana had foreseen. No, that wasn't true... One detail had been different. In her dream, she had said James would be with us, but I had made sure beforehand that he wasn't there. It was strange... She had dreamed of the white wolf even before Bella found out about Scatty. I wondered if she knew about her gift herself, or if she thought it was a coincidence that her "gut feeling" had been right so often. I had suspected it for a while, but only now was I sure that Ariana must be a seer. I would talk to her about that, after all, this gift could be immensely helpful if used consciously.

After the History lesson, James tried to catch me on the way to the dungeon, but I quickly walked ahead because I didn't know what to say to him. As I passed the Great Hall, my eyes fell for the first time today on the large hourglasses with the house points. I was horrified to notice that Slytherin seemed to be missing hardly any points and was currently leading in the race for the House Cup. I wished McGonagall was even half as biased as Snape; then we would at least have a chance of catching up with the snakes again.

I was relieved that Bella sat down next to me again in the dungeon. If I had had to work with James, I wouldn't have been able to avoid an explanation. Of course, I was aware that I owed him one anyway and was merely postponing it, but I was too worried about his reaction. The mere fact that Bella and I were talking to each other again and even getting along well earned me another suspicious look from him as he sat down next to Lavender again.

While we were taking care of our potion, I remembered the house points issue again. "Did Snape actually take any points from you?" I asked Bella, frustrated.

"Yes, 10 points each. I don't think the others even noticed that 20 points were missing," she replied with a mischievous grin and then added, shrugging her shoulders: "Snape wants the House Cup. It would be stupid to take more points from us then."

Yes, that's exactly what I thought too, but McGonagall was different. She'd rather punish her students extensively for such a rule violation than take sides, even if it meant we had virtually no chance of winning the House Cup anymore. We would have to be quite lucky in the Quidditch games to win as many points as possible for our house there, just to avoid coming in last.

I was already dreading encountering Professor McGonagall in Transfiguration class today, as I feared she wouldn't leave our action from the previous night unmentioned. She was simply the strictest woman I knew; you really didn't want to mess with her. It occurred to me what incredibly bad luck we had that we had been caught by her of all people and not by another teacher, except Snape of course.