10. Crouching Moody

Thursday night, the twelfth, they finished the lessons for Sixth-year and afterwards spent the rest of the night's "days" taking practice tests. Eighteen nights, it had taken them this time. An entire "month" more that Fifth Year, and two "months" more than Fourth!

They enthusiastically and energetically celebrated their accomplishment — that is, neither got a lot of sleep that last "night".

Then it was on to Seventh-year, and the N.E.W.T.s. They thought that in another week he would be ahead of the other champions in schoolwork! However, Seventh-year, they discovered, was even more difficult than the previous two Years.

In the middle of January, the fourteenth, came a Hogsmeade weekend, which everyone above Second year was looking forward to quite anxiously — especially Harry and Hermione. It had been two years of classes since the last Hogsmeade visit for them! The Hogsmeade visit for December would have been just as the December hols started, so there hadn't been one.

Leaving the castle with Ron, they noticed Krum diving into the loch.

Hagrid still had not returned to Care of Magical Creatures, and he refused to come out of his hut. They knew he was inside because Fang was inside and Hagrid would never have left Fang inside when he went into the forest — and he certainly wasn't working on the grounds in sight of the castle!

The Three Broomsticks was crowded, as usual, and they had to push their way to the bar to order their butterbeers. Surprisingly, Ludo Bagman was there, followed by several Goblins who seemed to think he was going to run away from them at any moment.

Harry felt that the less said about what happened in the pub, the better. Ludo had obviously been trying to help "Hogwarts," that is, Harry, win by cheating. Ludo's discounting of helping Cedric, along with the rumours Harry had heard, made Harry think the man had bet heavily on him somehow winning. Which meant the wizard's help was strictly self-serving, and made Harry feel dirty.

Rita Skeeter showing up didn't help, unfortunately. She tried to trick Harry into an interview. In the ensuing disagreement, Harry realized that everyone in the pub seemed to think Hagrid was a terrible person because he was a half-giant. This, despite them knowing him for most of their lives.

He wanted to forget the afternoon.

There were two good things to come from that day. One was that the altercation with Rita in the pub lit a fire under Hermione. She dragged the two of them to Hagrid's hut at almost a run.

The Headmaster was there when they arrived. Hermione somehow managed, with the Headmaster's help, to badger the half-giant into taking up his teaching of Care of Magical Creatures, again.

The other happened after dinner that evening. The twins pulled Hermione to one side as Harry followed. "A moment of your time, if you don't mind," one said as they were guided into a nearby, unoccupied classroom.

"Geniuses that we are," said other, after closing the door and putting a silencing charm on the room to prevent eavesdropping, "we have perfected a new product."

"We know the two of you are a couple," they both wagged their eyebrows suggestively, "and we've taken our experiments as far as we can."

"We decided . . .,"

"Since this was your idea . . .,"

"That you should have the . . . pleasure . . . of a few free samples."

"We would, of course, appreciate any criticisms or suggestions you might have."

They both grinned as one held out a small bag.

Hermione gingerly took the bag from Fred, at least, she thought it was Fred. She regarded it with more than a bit of suspicion. "How long do they last?"

The two laughed. "We have several versions in there."

"The first is like the canary cremes, and only lasts about fifteen seconds, the second lasts for half-an-hour, and the third lasts about eight hours."

She studied the bag carefully, then glanced at Harry. "If these work as you say they do," she seriously said to the twins, "we would like to invest two thousand galleons into your business."

All three of them stared at her.

"Really?" the twins squeaked at the same time.

She nodded. "We'll get back to you." She pulled out her wand, cancelled the silencing charms, and led Harry out of the room towards their dormitory.

Once they were in one of the "secret" passages, she called for Dobby. "Would you please take us to the Chamber of Secrets, Dobby?"

Once they arrived, Harry said, looking around, "Why here?"

"The Room has too much magic and we wouldn't know if it was the candies or the Room," she explained. "Here is also outside the magic in the Castle, which might also affect the candies. It shouldn't, but . . .." she shrugged.

They quickly doffed their clothes in case they constrained things or became so loose to be a problem.

To their surprise, the candies worked extremely well, much better than they had anticipated. Harry's features turned softer, his hair grew to past shoulder-length, his hips widened, and he developed a chest! His baps weren't the size of Susan's, but they were bigger than Hermione's!

She was not happy at that.

When Hermione tried one, she grew taller and slimmed down, her features becoming a bit more angular and a discernible Adam's Apple developed. Her hair shortened to just above her shoulders and straightened.

She was happy with her new appendage, even if it wasn't quite as large as the one Harry normally sported whenever she saw it. She was amazed to see it go from flaccid to erect merely by looking at nude female Harry. It gave her a new appreciation for when blokes claimed they had no control over getting a bar-on around girls.

The biggest surprise was when Harry's candy wore off. While he returned to his previous appearance and gender, he was slightly taller.

Apparently, the candies used his DNA genetic template as the standard, and not his previous condition! His scars were still present, though. Still, it was an unexpected and pleasant result. He no longer was the shortest person in his year, nor as short as some of the Firsties! In fact, based on what Hermione said, he was at least an inch taller!

That was one side effect they definitely would mention as a plus!

On the down side, he was the same weight. Which meant he looked skinnier than he had been. He absolutely needed to eat more to put back what little fat he had had. In point of fact, he was starving. So much so that they immediately headed for the kitchens and a quick meal!

If anyone else noticed his changes, the two decided they would simply say it was a growth spurt.

He ate a rather large second dinner in the castle kitchens, and finished it feeling satisfied, but not stuffed. Then it was back to the Chamber for a bit more exploration on the effectiveness of the candies. Discovering what sex was like from the opposite side was intriguing, and gave them both an appreciation of the opposite sex, and a better understanding of what to do to please their partner.

When the candies wore off, Harry was slightly taller, again. Apparently, he was getting closer to what his DNA said he should be.

Oh, yes, Sexy Sweets were going to be a huge success!

They'd have to save the eight-hour ones for when using them wouldn't impact their time in the Room.

The only other question was, would taking multiple candies at once add to the time? Use the time-limit for the last candy taken? Or do nothing except waste the candy? They'd leave that experimenting to the twins.

The next morning, they signed a contract with the twins investing two thousand galleons. In exchange they would get free product, including the gender-switching candies, and thirty-percent of the twins' profits, total . . . fifteen each.

After dinner that evening, instead of heading for the Common Room, Hermione led him and an excited Luna off in a different direction.

After taking a few "secret" passages, Hermione stopped in one and told them to wait, she would be back.

Five minutes later, the wall of the passage suddenly opened. Hermione was inside and waved them to hurry in. Harry saw that the room was a copy of their bedroom in the Room of Requirement, only the bed was significantly larger.

Harry frowned. From the magic he could feel, they were in the Room of Requirement. It took him a moment to realize what Hermione had done. She had gone to the Room of Requirement and opened it as their study bedroom. Then, she had had Hogwarts open a portal in the passage with Harry and Luna.

Luna would never know that this room wasn't really located in that passage!

From the bed, Harry figured out that Hermione had decided to grant Luna's wish. Harry was rather surprised at that, but if she was alright with it, then so was he. Just the thought of being in that bed with both girls gave him a full bar-on, especially now that he knew Luna a bit better.

Luna had been forewarned, of course. With her usual straightforwardness, she stripped out of her robe as soon as she saw the bed, and took a running leap into it.

He gave a questioning look to Hermione, who was removing her robes, but a good deal slower than Luna. She nodded, blushing.

He wagged his head side to side, said, "Okay," and took off his robes.

"Oh," Luna said, staring at his waist. "The rumours are true!"

Harry took it slow, and started with kissing her lightly, then worked his way down her neck to her pert chest. He dallied there for a while, then went back up for some deep kisses. He worked his way back down again, but this time didn't stop until he arrived between her legs.

She was a screamer, it appeared.

When he pulled back, Luna wide-eyed and panting, he saw that Hermione was watching from a plush chair by the bed, with one hand between her legs and the other squeezing and pinching her chest.

Luna was unused to what Harry had between his legs, but that didn't dampen her enthusiasm. They managed several different positions before she, too, ended up passing out.

"How long do we have?" Harry said to Hermione, as he got up and pulled her onto the bed beside the sleeping Luna.

She grinned at him. "It's running at a slower rate than normal . . . two hours outside is a day in here."

"Excellent," he said, sliding inside her. "I wouldn't want this to be hurried."

She was in her third climax when Luna woke up and started kissing her breasts.

Between the two girls, Harry did not get much sleep that "night."

They had a brief breakfast, then resumed their sport, to Luna's surprise. They assured her that they wouldn't be missing any classes, that no one would come looking for them, so they frolicked for another few hours. Luna, it appeared, like giving oral service to both of them. She seemed to especially like it when Harry was behind her while Hermione was in front, and vice versa.

She especially enjoyed the Gender Sweets!

Of course, interspaced between sessions of sex, there were periods where they just talked about various things and recovered their breath. Luna talked about her life in Ottery St Catchpole in Devon with Ginny, and how her mother, an Unspeakable, had died when a spell went wrong, and then her father had buried himself in his work in grief. She did a lot of crying.

Hermione talked about her home life, and primary school. Her parents being "swingers" — something Luna had never heard of — where they shared partners because having only one sex-partner forever was boring. Variety, as Hermione told them, is the spice of life, after all.

Cheating on their life-partner by sneaking around with others, as many did, would ruin their marriage. Just look at how many people divorced because of "another woman" or "another man." Look how unhappy wives or husbands were to discover their life-partner had someone else on the side without their knowledge. But if they did it with their partner's knowledge and cooperation? Then there weren't any issues to worry about!

At least, that's what her parents had explained to her when she had grown up enough to notice some of their more indiscrete comments at home.

Harry even talked a bit about his relatives, Harry Hunting, and some of his accidental magic incidents.

But by the evening, Luna had definitely thoroughly enjoyed Harry's John Thomas in all three possible locations, and many different positions.

After a long shower, they redressed and went back out into the "secret" passage. Luna was delighted to discover, when they got back to the Gryffindor Common room, that they had been gone for less than two hours!

Their trysts became a regular adventure for the trio — one thoroughly enjoyed by all three. They continued to use secret passage behind the painting of Edward Rabnott's portrait to avoid anyone noticing their much more public going to and from Barnabas the Barmy's tapestry on the seventh floor. It was much safer for Hermione to sneak to the Room under Harry's invisibility cloak than all three.

Plus, it kept the room secret for that much longer.

.o\O/o.

It was on Saturday, January Twenty-first, that Harry celebrated passing Cedric and the other Champions in his Seventh-year studies.

They took their N.E.W.T. exams on the night of January Thirty-first. Harry thought he did surprisingly well, oscillating between Exceeds Expectations and Outstandings. Hermione did about what he had expected . . . that is, Outstandings in everything.

It had taken them twenty nights in the room, the equivalent of almost forty-eight "weeks" of classes in Hogwarts. Both of them shuddered at the thought of just how much pressure they would have been under if they had tried to do that in the forty weeks that made up a normal Hogwarts year (including the extra weeks of Christmas and Easter).

No wonder the Seventh years always seemed to be worn to a frazzle!

On the other hand, the extra time meant that they had had plenty of time to learn and master what was needed for her to score Outstandings in all eight subjects: D.A.D.A, Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Potions, and Runes, while he did the same in most of his subjects, with Arithmancy, Potions, and Runes being only Exceeds Expectations. Just a couple of nights in the Room taking practice N.E.W.T. exams would be sufficient for improve those for Harry, and give Hermione a chance at getting Outstanding Pluses!

That their relationship had grown in that time and not collapsed seemed to prove the point that they were Romantic Soulmates — if not from before, then certainly they were now! Neither could imagine living without the other in their life and bed.

Luna was approaching that stage, too. Harry found her unusual outlook on life to be fun and made him think. Hermione found her "imaginary" animals a bit frustrating, but as more and more of them were verified, admitted the curious girl had insights that no one else could match.

They had twenty-three nights in the room to plan for the Second task — an entire school year and nearly two months. Not counting the normal weekends, Christmas, and Easter, of course.

Now, they could concentrate on the second task.

However, that night in the castle, after he had written in his journal all his notes for the day, Harry took a look at the Marauders' Map one more time.

He had taken to doing that every night just to check things in the castle, and on Moody and Crouch, before calling for Dobby.

While at the Ball, Ludo Bagman had said Barty Crouch was too sick to go to his job at the Ministry, so why was he at Hogwarts all the time? Harry suspected the two were secret lovers, and that Moody was taking care of the sick man.

It wasn't his place to interfere, so he had only told Hermione and Ron. Ron had been scandalized, but promised not to say anything.

This time, unlike the other times, Crouch was not with Moody in his office. Crouch was in Professor Snape's office, and Professor Snape was not!

If Crouch was so sick, what was he doing wandering around the castle after curfew? Something Harry hadn't seen him do in all the months he had been at the school. Especially in Snape's office late at night while The Professor was doing a curfew patrol!

Plus, there was absolutely no way Snape would allow any other Professor in his office when he wasn't in it, never mind a Ministry official. And after curfew? Never! Something was very wrong.

But he didn't have time to do anything, himself. He would turn it over to someone who was skilled at remaining invisible and escaping notice.

He showed the map to Dobby, after explaining how it worked. Then he explained that Crouch was supposed to be too sick to go to the Ministry to work, yet, here he was wandering the castle at night. "Dobby, would you keep an eye on Crouch and Moody? Something isn't right here."

"Dobby do!" the house-elf declared, and popped him to the corridor outside the Room. Hermione had already prepared the Room, Harry knew. Dobby always took her there, first.

He grinned at Dobby as he started into the Room. "Thanks Dobby, you're the best!"

.o\O/o.

"Well," Hermione said over their leisurely breakfast in the Room, "You can use gillyweed, but the drawback to that is its time limit. You eat it, it lasts for an hour. If you finish early, too bad, you have to stay in the loch. If you can't finish the Task in under an hour, you have to take a second dose, and then you're back to waiting for it to wear off when you finish the Task. Which means, if you're only a dozen or so minutes past the Task's deadline, you're stuck in the loch until the hour passes. If you try to use smaller dosages, then you're still waiting for the latest does to wear off — not to mention the inconvenience of having to carefully monitor your time and take the extra doses as needed. That assumes that nothing happens to make it difficult for you to take the dose, such as fighting off one of the lochs denizens at that time."

She paused a moment, looking at her parchment list. "The advantages are that it gives you gills so you don't have to worry about breathing spells, like the bubble-head charm, and their limitations. It also gives you fins, which will greatly increase your speed under water."

She paused again.

"Next we have transfigurations." She looked up at Harry and smiled. "You've gotten a lot better at that in here." She took another sip of her tea. "The disadvantage is just how good you have to be at self-transfiguration. Transfiguring your hands and feet into fins isn't too difficult, you'll need just a bit of practice for that, that'll give you the advantage of fins like gillyweed. However, you'll need to either use a spell or transfigure gills to breath. Gills will be pretty difficult to get down properly, I think. Also, there's the cold water to consider. Unless you go for a complete transfiguration, to a sea creature of some kind, you'll have to use warming charms to keep from freezing."

She pursed her lips. "The advantage is that everything is under your control, it starts when you want, and ends when you want."

She shook her head. "The last one is to just swimming with an underwater breathing spell. That's the slowest option, plus you still have to cast the warming charms."

She sighed. "Right now, the gillyweed looks like the best choice." She smiled at him. "We can experiment with the gillyweed after ordering some, and explore the loch a bit to see where everything is and where the 'thing you'll miss most' will mostly likely be hidden. Until them, let's practice the transfigurations . . .."

Professor Hogwarts, though, had a different point of view. "While the English and other Westerners use wands, the Chinese use rituals and the Japanese use written incantations" he explained.

"Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

"Magic is like the Muggles' concept of Quantum Mechanics. That is, the expectations of the 'observer', the person using the magic, affects the results. If you expect something to be hard to do, it will be. If you expect it to be easy, it probably will be. The English expect to need a wand to work magic, and thus they need a wand to work magic. This is why so few Western Wizards can do wandless magic. It is unnatural to them, and their very faith in their wands makes it difficult to do wandless magic.

"As the Muggle's have discovered, light is both particle and not. Magic is similarly both wanded and wandless, ritualled and unritualled, written and unwritten.

"True mastery of magic is merely true mastery of yourself."

The Professor smiled. "The occlumency you have been learning and using to keep organized what you've learned, and the things you've heard and done each day, is the first step in that mastery."

They spent the rest of the "morning" working on their occlumency, learning how to create a mindscape, how to organize it to immediately detect an intrusion, and how to erect barriers to repel intrusions.

In the "afternoon", they worked on silent casting using their wands. Their N.E.W.T.s had required learning silent casting, but there was a big difference between knowing the theory and casting a few spells, and being a professional Duellist! It was like the difference between learning to ride a bike and being good enough to compete in a professional off-road rough-terrain bicycle race!

No matter if Harry was transfigured, used gillyweed or just a breathing spell, he needed to be able to cast spells underwater — quickly, efficiently, and without undue concentration about what he was doing.

In the first case, they weren't sure that whatever the Merfolk spoke underwater would work with spells — given that it was screeching gibberish outside of water, who really knew if what they said underwater would be interpreted correctly by magic? In the second, he'd be completely unable to say the incantations to use his wand. In the last case, if something went wrong and the breathing spell was disrupted, he'd be in a similar situation.

They started with the First-year spells.

The next "morning", they worked on their occlumency and self-transfigurations, with them making their fingers and toes into fins. The Professor used copious three-D diagrams sectioned to show off the interior of the limbs and torso.

The "afternoon" was again spent on silent casting.

That was their schedule for the remaining 'weekdays', alternating their morning occlumency and transfiguration efforts while working on silent casting in the afternoons until they were too tired to continue.

While their First- and Second-year spells were easy to adapt to silent-casting, the two barely completed Third-year before returning to the castle for a normal day.

He hated waking in the castle to a bed bereft of Hermione. It was too cold, by far — and lonely.

The first thing he did on waking was head for the owlery to send for an adequate supply of gillyweed using a potion shop's catalogue. His portion of the first sales of the basilisk were more than enough to cover any expenditures he might require — as long as he wasn't buying racing-brooms in bulk!

The Professor had also given him a bag of coins in which sickles far outnumbered the galleons, and the knuts were ridiculously high in their quantity.

When he had asked where they came from, The Professor had said. "These were gathered by the house-elves as lost or abandoned coins, or someone hid them in the Room of Hidden Things and never came back for them.* For example, Myrtle Warren had some coins among her belongings when she died. Her trunk, books, coins, and other things were placed in the Room of Lost Things. Her family, being Muggles, were obliviated of all knowledge of magic and told she had died in an accident on the day before her eleventh birthday."

Harry and Hermione had exchanged appalled glances. They had heard that many Muggle-born and Half-blood families had been killed by Tom Riddle and his followers. If they had been killed over a school hols, and not the summer, then their belongings at school would also have been put in the "Lost Things" room.

Was that the origin of their Fifth-, Sixth-, and Seventh-year textbooks that they had been using? They had never considered exactly where the books came from, just assuming that they had been extra stock from the castle library. Of course, they still could be and the two were over-thinking the situation.

The bag had been an "expanded" bag, also from the Room of Hidden Things, and would be used to return the gillyweed.

Once Hedwig was out of sight, he sent a school owl to Sirius. He had promised Sirius, oh, so long ago — years by the Room's reckoning — that he would tell him of the anything strange happening at Hogwarts, and the Moody and Crouch situation certainly qualified.

He used a school owl because Hedwig would draw attention to Sirius, wherever he was. The owl was too beautiful and striking for her own good. That he was buying gillyweed would draw no attention, considering his part in the Tournament.

Thinking about that, he made a note to ask The Professor for a rune-sequence for an auto-sizing ring that would cast an illusion over Hedwig to make her look like a common bird of some sort, maybe the Common Buzzard, Canadian Goose, or a pigeon. All three were found practically everywhere in Britain and no one would notice anything unusual at seeing her flying around. The only one to see her real appearance would be the addressee.

The rest of the day went just like a typical day at Hogwarts always went for Harry and Hermione now that they had finished Fourth Year so long ago — very boring classes. They both had to remember to cast out loud, and not do the spells too quickly.

They had a huge advantage over their classmates, now. They had to be careful about accidentally arousing anyone's suspicions — especially whomever had put Harry's name in the Cup! It grated on Hermione's nerves something awful to downplay her abilities and not show-off what she knew, but they couldn't risk tipping their hands.

Still, for Harry, it was nice to see and talk to the other students, and even lose a chess game or three to Ron. Hermione, Luna, and Ginny seemed to getting along pretty well. It was kinda of odd how Hermione got along better with the Third-year cohort in the library study room than her own roommates. On the other hand, her relationship with her roommates had improved now that she was doing all her assignments in the Room, and spending her time in the rest of the castle relaxing.

Speaking of Luna, Professor Flitwick had been very unhappy to see how rapidly Luna had climbed to the top of her class once she was out of his House.

That night, after Harry wrote up the day in his journal after curfew and was waiting for eleven o'clock to go to the Room, Dobby showed up early.

"Dobby be watching Mr. Couchy and Professor Scarry all night and all day, just as Harry Potter Sir asked," he explained. "Professor Scarry is in his room all night and all day. Mr. Couchy be teaching Professor Scary classes, but he be looking like Professor Scarry."

Harry stared at Dobby. "Mr. Crouch is teaching Professor Moody's classes as Professor Moody?" he said incredulously.

Dobby nodded.

"It couldn't be an illusion," he thought out loud, "The Headmaster would immediately have noticed." He went silent. "Polyjuice?" he added a moment later, just as surprised.

Dobby blinked, frowning heavily for a moment. "Elveses say," he started slowly, "Professor Scowly is . . . unhappy that someone is stealing lacewings and boomslang skin from him, which be used in change-juice." He paused. "It be happening for months."

Harry shook his head. "That makes no sense! Why would Crouch do such a thing?"

He sighed. "Okay. You can stop watching Professor Moody . . . Crouch. We don't want to tip our hand. Hermione and I will work on it tonight."

Five minutes later he was explaining to Hermione what he had seen on the map, and what Dobby had reported.

Five minutes after that, he was explaining it to The Professor.

The Professor nodded. "I know," he said to Harry, "and he was the one to put your name in the Cup."

"What!?" they both exclaimed.

"Your map doesn't show you the full names of the people on it. Bartemius Crouch Senior is from the ministry. He was the one you met on Halloween night after the selection of Champions, and he is the one that Ludo Bagman was talking about no longer showing up at work.

"Bartemius Crouch Junior is the one taking Polyjuice to appear as Mr. Moody. He has been doing it since he arrived at Hogwarts on September first."

Harry collapsed onto a chair that abruptly appeared behind him.

"But, why?" Harry said plaintively.

The Professor shrugged. "I would assume that because Bartemius Crouch Junior is a convicted Death Eater . . .,"

They both gasped.

". . . who has escaped from Azkaban, that it has something to do with Voldemort."

"But the Ministry has said no one has ever escaped from Azkaban!" Hermione protested.

The Professor shrugged. "Bartemius Crouch Junior was caught, convicted, and sent to Azkaban. Now he is here. The Ministry has never said he was officially released."

"Why doesn't anyone know this?"

The Professor shrugged, again. "No one has asked me what I know."

They just stared at her, stunned.

"What do we do?" Harry said, staring at Hermione.

"Tell the Headmaster!" she said firmly.

Harry stared at her a moment in disbelief, then snorted and rolled his eyes. "And what if he does nothing? Or worse, something ridiculous? The Philosopher's Stone is in danger! I know! Let's hide a valuable item that every dark wizard in the world wants in a school full of children! Nothing can go wrong with that!" He shook his head. "I'll put a simple lock that any first-year could open on a door hiding a three-headed giant dog, no need for an age-line spell! That'll be perfectly safe, none of the children will go there after I tell them certain death awaits if they do!"

Harry glared at the wall behind Hermione. "He hires a Professor who faints at Halloween when he sees a Troll when he knows the man has a talent for dealing with Trolls? He had to know who let that Troll in!"

He sighed unhappily. "Any one of those would have seen him kicked out of a Muggle school, and in front of a court for endangering the lives of children!" he said exasperatedly.

"A monster is petrifying students and he does nothing to find it? There are enough portraits in the school to have every corridor under watch at all times, yet that never occurs to him?

"And telling him presupposes that he believes us! You've seen how he takes Snape's word for everything, even when he knows the man is lying! He never even pretends to ask any of the watching portraits what happened!"

Harry shook his head. "He can easily verify any account of what happened with a pensieve, yet he never does. He can see into the minds of every student he looks in the eye, and knows the truth, yet he lets Snape lie and lie and lie!"

He threw his hands in the air in disgust and walked in a small circle.

"No, we can't tell the Headmaster, or anyone else."

Hermione sighed. "Let's sleep on it. We have plenty of time before the next Task to decide what to do."

Harry stared at her, then ran a hand through his hair. "I honestly don't think I'll sleep tonight knowing all this is that imposter's fault."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" she said. "Do you regret all the time we've spent in here?" She waved her hand negligently. "You can take your N.E.W.T.s at the end of this year and go where you like, as can I."

She narrowed her eyes. "Do you regret us?"

His jaw dropped. "No!" he said quickly, aghast, "Of course not!" He groped for something that wouldn't get him in trouble. "It's just . . .," his voice trailed off. He sighed and his shoulders slumped. "I was hoping for a quiet year where my life wasn't at risk all the time.

"And now I have to worry about a confrontation with Riddle," he mumbled, "Just like in First and Second years!"

"Maybe," Hermione said slowly, choosing her words carefully, "that's what this is about?"

Harry looked at her with a questioning expression.

"The only reason I can think of to enter you into the Triwizard Tournament is to get you somewhere where he can attack you. Get you out of Hogwarts."

She shook her head. "But it's way too convoluted. Why not just have Crouch hide in Hogsmeade as an ordinary wizard, stun you during a Hogsmeade Weekend, and take you to Riddle? Why all this . . . effort?"

She pursed her lips and thought. "There's more to this than we know. We need to catch and interrogate him."

Harry laughed bitterly. "With as paranoid as he is? We won't get within ten feet of him before he knows something is wrong and blasts us. Then we'd be lucky to escape unobliviated!"

She walked over behind his chair and leaned down to rest her chin on his head — and distract him with what she had resting on either side of his ears as a result.

"Let's go to bed," she suggested. "I'll make sure you get to sleep."

And she did . . . an hour or so after they hit the bed.

The next "morning", over breakfast, they again considered the problem.

"With his magic eye, we can't sneak up on him. Plus, that eye can see magic, so we can't ambush him from a distance, nor can we set a trap spell," Hermione said.

"Not to mention he has ridiculously fast reactions," Harry added glumly.

"It's too bad we want to catch him and not merely reveal him," Hermione said. "We could use a switching spell the next time he takes a drink from his flask to replace the Polyjuice with the Draught of Living Death. Then, he would be helpless to prevent the Polyjuice from wearing off in the middle of dinner and then escaping, for example."

Harry snorted. "He probably has a spell protecting the flask, or the twins would already have slipped a liquid canary cream into it."

She sighed. "True."

They sat, thinking and finishing their breakfast.

"What if we hide a trap-spell in something that is already magical? That way, even if he saw the magic, he would think it was merely the magic that was already there?"

She frowned. "We'd have to know what was magical, ourselves, before we could do that. And how powerful. If we tried to hide, say . . . a stupefy, he'd easily see something wrong if the stupefy was stronger than the spell already on the object."

The Professor was more than willing to teach them the spell to "see" magic. It could be cast on glasses or on someone's eyes. The advantage to glasses was that it was easy to look over the top of them to see more clearly something that was blurry because of the aura of the magic on it.

Like the Headmaster sometimes did with his glasses.

It took only a few minutes for them to master the basics.

The Room was blindingly bright.

Then it was onto their morning of occlumency and self-transfigurations, and the "afternoon" on silent casting.

In the evening, they practiced finessing the "magic-seeing" spell to search for certain kinds, or levels, of magic.

That became their schedule for the rest of the "days" that night.

Hermione ended up "rescuing" a pair of glasses from the Room of Lost Things. She changed the lenses to be neutral in vision-correction, and then made them invisible to everyone but herself and Harry, with a don't-notice-it spell on the glasses and their magic. That last meant that only if someone were actively-looking for the magic on the glasses, would they see it.

Harry felt like hitting himself when he realized there was an entire litany of spells based on runes just for glasses. With the help of an enlarging spell, he added everything he could find that he thought might even remotely be of use to his glasses. Forever correct prescription, unbreakable, ever-dry-and-clean (an advanced form of the one Hermione had cast on his glasses long ago for Quidditch), anti-glare, automatic adjusting sunglasses, and always comfortable were no-brainers.

Considering the scrapes he continuously got into, anti-summoning, anti-slip, anti-grab, anti-reflection (so others don't see reflected light); flash protection so no one could blind him, and magic-reflection to bounce curses aimed at his eyes were must-haves. That last was also a limited protection against a legilimens attack, too. They can't see his mindscape if they can't get to the windows to it!

Then there were the ones that would be just plain useful to have, starting with seeing magic! Zooming in and out, seeing in total darkness, adjustable night-vision for when there was a bit of light, seeing in ultra-violet, seeing in infra-red, seeing through things (like Mad-Eyes eye did), X-ray vision, and seeing invisible things.

Hermione, of course, also added those spells to her glasses.

Then came the trials of learning to use the glasses.

.o\O/o.

Author's Note: * Property is generally deemed "abandoned" if it is in a place where the owner probably intended to leave it, but is in such a condition that it is apparent that he or she has no intention of returning to claim it, like things at a tip. A student hiding stolen items or contraband from the Prefects, Professors, or other students certainly fits the "abandoned property" definition if they hadn't come back for it since last term, or longer.

"Lost" property, on the other hand, is found in a place where the owner likely did not intend to leave it, and where it is not likely to be found by the owner. House-elves putting something in the Room of Lost Things that they had found matches the "lost property" definition. Trunks and bags left behind when a student went home and their family was wiped out by Death Eaters fits the description of both "abandoned property" and "lost property".

In both cases, under English common law, the finder of such items could claim the right to possess the item against any person except the true owner or any previous owners (except thieves). That it was in the school was irrelevant, just as finding a lost or mislaid wallet in a department store doesn't mean the wallet can be claimed by the store owner as his property. That's why most stores have a "Lost and Found" room instead of just keeping or selling what they find. The item can be sold only after waiting a reasonable time for the owner to come for his "lost" item, generally conceded to be one year . . . one year covers someone who only shops in a certain store once a year for Christmas, for example.

In the case of the Room of Requirement, the original owners are either dead or don't care about what they had hidden. The exceptions would be the things that were obviously school chairs, tables, cabinets, and so forth. Those things were being stored, and were neither abandoned nor lost, no matter their condition.

Things in the Founder's Rooms, of course, just as the things in regular classrooms, don't count. They are where they are supposed to be, waiting to be used, even though the owner is dead.