Chapter 62: Neville's Big Mistake

It felt as though we had already won the Quidditch Cup; the party went on all day and well into the night. Fred and George disappeared for a couple of hours and returned with armfuls of bottles of butterbeer, pumpkin fizz, and several bags full of Honeydukes sweets.

"How did you do that?" squealed Angelina as George started throwing Peppermint Toads into the crowd.

Only one person wasn't joining in the festivities. Hermione, incredibly, was sitting in a corner, attempting to read an enormous book. Harry went over and said something to her.

She must have wanted me to hear her response, because she said very loudly, "Of course I did, And I'm very glad we won, and I think you did really well, but I need to read this by Monday."

"Come on, Hermione, come and have some food," Harry said, looking over at me for some strange reason. I may have been elated, but I was not ready to talk to her .

"I can't, Harry. I've still got four hundred and twenty-two pages to read!" I overheard Hermione, hysterically say "Anyway, he doesn't want me to join in."

It irritated me that she didn't even say my name. "If Scabbers hadn't just been eaten, he could have had some of those Fudge Flies. He used to really like them." I said loudly.

I looked over quickly and seen Hermione burst into tears. She tucked the enormous book under her arm, and, still sobbing, ran toward the staircase to the girls' dormitories and out of sight.

"Can't you give her a break?" Harry asked me as he sat down.

"No." I said flatly. "If she just acted like she was sorry, but she'll never admit she's wrong, Hermione. She's still acting like Scabbers has gone on vacation or something."

"Maybe she doesn't know how to approach you with it, you know?" tried Harry.

"She has known me for almost three years, Harry. She knows that all she needs to do is apologize and acknowledge that this was indeed her fault." I said stubbornly.

Harry shook his head.

The Gryffindor party ended only when Professor McGonagall turned up in her dressing gown and hair net at one in the morning, to insist that we all go to bed. Harry and I climbed the stairs to our dorm, still discussing the match. At last, exhausted, I climbed into bed, laid back, and drifted off to sleep.

I was having a pleasant dream about flying around on Harry's Firebolt, when suddenly, my dream went from sunny to cold. In my sleep, I felt a slight chill, and I thought I heard ripping as I was coming around. I peeked through my eyes and seen masses of dark hair and a eerie face hovering over me. My eyes immediately snapped open when I spied a knife in his hand.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I reamed at the top of my lungs. The figure ran off and out of the dorm.

"What's going on?" came Seamus voice as I looked at my ripped curtains.

Harry opened up his curtains and Dean lit a lamp.

I sat on my bed, shaking with fear.

"Black! Sirius Black! With a knife!" I managed to get out.

"What?"

"Here! Just now! Slashed the curtains! Woke me up!"

"You sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?" said Dean.

"Look at the curtains! I tell you, he was here!" I yelled, pointing to my slashed curtains.

We all scrambled out of bed. Harry reached the dorm door first, and we sprinted back down the staircase. Doors opened behind us, and sleepy voices called after them.

"Who shouted?"

"What're you doing?"

The common room was lit with the glow of the dying fire, still littered with the debris from the party. It was deserted.

"Are you sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?" asked Harry.

"I'm telling you, I saw him!" I yelled once again, my body still uncontrollably shaking.

"What's all the noise?"

"Professor McGonagall told us to go to bed!"

A few of the girls had come down their staircase, pulling on dressing gowns and yawning. Boys, too, were reappearing.

"Excellent, are we carrying on?" said Fred brightly.

"Everyone back upstairs!" said Percy, hurrying into the common room and pinning his Head Boy badge to his pajamas as he spoke.

"Perce - Sirius Black!" I said faintly. "In our dormitory! With a knife! Woke me up!"

The common room went very still.

"Nonsense!" said Percy, looking startled. "You had too much to eat, Ron - had a nightmare -"

"I'm telling you -"

"Now, really, enough's enough!"

Professor McGonagall was back. She slammed the portrait behind her as she entered the common room and stared furiously around.

"I am delighted that Gryffindor won the match, but this is getting ridiculous! Percy, I expected better of you!"

"I certainly didn't authorize this, Professor!" said Percy, "I was just telling them all to get back to bed! My brother Ron here had a nightmare -"

"IT WASN'T A NIGHTMARE!" I yelled, tired of no one listening to me. "PROFESSOR, I WOKE UP, AND SIRIUS BLACK WAS STANDING OVER ME, HOLDING A KNIFE!"

Professor McGonagall stared at him.

"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley, how could he possibly have gotten through the portrait hole?"

"Ask him!" I said, pointing a shaking finger at the back of Sir Cadogan's picture. "Ask him if he saw."

Professor McGonagall pushed the portrait back open and went outside. The whole common room went silent so we could hear what was being said.

"Sir Cadogan, did you just let a man enter Gryffindor Tower?"

"Certainly, good lady!" cried Sir Cadogan.

There was a stunned silence, both inside and outside the common room.

"You...you did?" said Professor McGonagall. "But...but the password!"

"He had 'em!" said Sir Cadogan proudly. "Had the whole week's, my lady! Read 'em off a little piece of paper!"

Professor McGonagall pulled herself back through the portrait hole to face the stunned crowd. She was white as chalk.

"Which person," she said, her voice shaking, "which abysmally foolish person wrote down this week's passwords and left them lying around?"

There was utter silence, broken by the smallest of terrified squeaks. Neville, trembling from head to fluffy slippered toes, raised his hand slowly into the air.

No one in Gryffindor Tower slept that night. We knew that the castle was being searched again, and the whole House stayed awake in the common room, waiting to hear whether Black had been caught. Professor McGonagall came back at dawn, to tell us that he had again escaped.

Throughout the day, everywhere we went, we saw signs of tighter security. Professor Flitwick could be seen teaching the front doors to recognize a large picture of Sirius Black, and Filch was suddenly bustling up and down the corridors, boarding up everything from tiny cracks in the walls to mouse holes.

Sir Cadogan had been fired. His portrait had been taken back to its lonely landing on the seventh floor, and the Fat Lady was back. She had been restored, but was still extremely nervous, and had agreed to return to her job only on condition that she was given extra protection. A bunch of security trolls had been hired to guard her. They paced the corridor in a menacing group, talking in grunts and comparing the size of their clubs.

Harry had told me about the statue of the one-eyed witch on the third floor that had the secret path to Honeydukes under it. It remained unguarded and unblocked. It seemed that Fred and George had been right in thinking that they, and now Harry, Hermione, and I, were the only ones who knew about the hidden passageway within it.

"D'you reckon we should tell someone?" Harry asked me.

"We know he's not coming in through Honeydukes," I said. "We'd've heard if the shop had been broken into."

It had seemed that I had become an instant celebrity. For the first time in my life, people were paying more attention to me than to Harry, and I was very much enjoying the experience. Though I was still fearful, I was happy to tell anyone who asked what had happened, with a wealth of detail.

"I was asleep, and I heard this ripping noise, and I thought it was in my dream, you know? But then there was this draft. I woke up and one side of the hangings on my bed had been pulled down. I rolled over...and I saw him standing over me...like a skeleton, with loads of filthy hair...holding this great long knife, must've been twelve inches...and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and then I yelled, and he scampered."

"Why, though?" I added to Harry as the group of second year girls who had been listening to my chilling tale departed. "Why did he run?"

"Good question." said Harry, scratching his head. "He must've known he'd have a job getting back out of the castle once you'd yelled and woken people up. He would've had to kill the whole house to get back through the portrait hole...then he would've met the teachers..."

Neville was in total disgrace. Professor McGonagall was so furious with him she had banned him from all future Hogsmeade visits, given him a detention, and forbidden anyone to give him the password into the tower. Poor Neville was forced to wait outside the common room every night for somebody to let him in, while the security trolls leered unpleasantly at him.

None of these punishments, however, came close to matching the one his grandmother had in store for him. Two days after Black's break-in, she sent Neville the very worst thing a Hogwarts student could receive over breakfast.

A Howler.

The school owls swooped into the Great Hall carrying the mail as usual, and Neville choked as a huge barn owl landed in front of him, a scarlet envelope clutched in its beak. Harry and I, sitting opposite him, recognized the letter as a Howler at once.

"Run for it, Neville." I advised.

Neville didn't need telling twice. He seized the envelope, and holding it before him like a bomb, sprinted out of the hall, while the Slytherin table exploded with laughter at the sight of him. We heard the Howler go off in the entrance hall, Neville's grandmother's voice, magically magnified to a hundred times its usual volume, shrieking about how he had brought shame on the whole family.

Hedwig had swooped down too with a letter, however, Harry didn't notice. Hedwig got his attention by nipping him sharply on the wrist.

"Ouch! Oh - thanks, Hedwig."

Harry tore open the envelope while Hedwig helped herself to some of Neville's cornflakes. The note inside said:

Dear Harry and Ron,

How about having tea with me this afternoon 'round six? I'll come collect you from the castle.

WAIT FOR ME IN THE ENTRANCE HALL; YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED OUT ON YOUR OWN.

Cheers,

Hagrid

"He probably wants to hear all about Black!" I said.

So at six o'clock that afternoon, Harry and I left Gryffindor Tower, passed the security trolls at a run, and headed down to the entrance hall.