A piercing wind ruled the world. It howled through the openwork arches and rattled the torches in their brackets, and in the shadowed corners the firelight could not reach, white crystals of ice were quietly growing, spreading in delicate, silent fans across the damp stone.
Harry made no move to straighten his crooked collar. He only glared at the corner of the corridor where Malfoy and Parkinson had just disappeared, breath after breath puffing white mist into the air.
Their footsteps had long since faded, but he went on staring at the empty bend.
Some shock still lingered on his cheeks, wet with the fine rain.
Harry knew he had pierced through Malfoy's mental defences. But there was not a shred of joy in his heart.
There was no doubt about it: the dagger Sirius had given him, Hermione's Felix Felicis, and the most important thing lost tonight, the staff of the dark witch Cliodna. All of it was Malfoy's doing. The words he had just shouted at Harry were as good as confirmation.
But before he knew it, Harry's eyebrows were drawn tight and his breathing had grown rough and heavy.
The despair and helplessness that had burst from the depths of Malfoy's grey eyes had pierced Harry's heart like a thorn, leaving him at a loss.
'Could it be that Malfoy had some hidden trouble he could not speak of?'
Amid the welter of thoughts leaping through his mind, this one quickly came into focus.
'Could it be… that Malfoy didn't really want to work for Voldemort, that he was only being forced?'
A trace of sympathy had only just begun to well up when Harry pressed it back down. His dazed, uncertain gaze turned clear once more.
So, what if it was Voldemort himself who had forced Malfoy?
It wasn't as though Malfoy had no options, was it! He could easily have gone to Professor Watson and Professor Dumbledore for help. They would surely have come up with a reliable plan to help Malfoy break free of Voldemort. When all was said and done, Malfoy himself had simply given in.
"Hah—"
It was half a laugh and half a sigh, and it dissolved in the wind. Harry turned his head and looked out past the arches of the corridor.
In the drifting drizzle that filled the sky and earth, only Hagrid's hut and Professor Rahansen's wooden house, which stood on sides of the Forbidden Forest's boundary line, flickered with firelight.
But that firelight could not warm the bleak, freezing winter; it only made the world look lonelier by contrast, two small embers in an ocean of dark.
"How am I supposed to make Professor Watson believe that Malfoy took the staff in his safekeeping…"
Harry murmured it softly to himself, pain showing between his eyebrows.
Hermione, standing behind him with her arms wrapped tight around herself against the cold, hesitated for a moment but said nothing.
Had Professor Dumbledore and Professor Watson guessed that it was Malfoy and Parkinson who had done all of this?
That was a question worth chewing over.
Tonight, a great commotion had been stirred up to recover the missing staff. But Hermione lowered her head and watched her own shadow, twisting and shifting with the flicker of the flames. What kept flashing through her brown eyes was the way Professor Dumbledore and Professor Watson had conducted themselves tonight.
If Hermione were to judge tonight's operation to recover the staff, it would be this: all bark and no bite.
Ostensibly to recover the staff, Professor Dumbledore had even mobilized the entire staff and had the young wizards kept under watch in the Great Hall. Yet there had been the leisurely tea, the biscuits, the cheerful talk of Transfiguration Today.
All of it seemed almost as if they were… as if they were putting on a show for someone!
And where, exactly, had Malfoy hidden that staff?
Filch knew the castle better than anyone, and given how serious the matter was, he would not have overlooked a single place in it where something could be hidden. Unless Malfoy had hidden the staff outside the castle?
And Professor Snape would not lie in front of Professor Dumbledore and Professor Watson. Malfoy and Parkinson most likely really hadn't drunk Felix Felicis to help themselves evade the search.
Then why had her own Felix Felicis been stolen?
The questions went round and round like moths against a lantern, and she could not make a single one of them settle.
"Come on, Harry," she said at last, softly, and touched his elbow. "It's freezing. Standing here won't bring the staff back, and it certainly won't help Ron."
He gave a short nod and let himself be led away.
Many people were destined to go without sleep that night.
Harry, of course, was one of them.
Without Ron's snoring, the dormitory suddenly felt a good deal emptier.
He lay on his back with the hangings half drawn, and he kept staring blankly into the darkness at Ron's empty four-poster, its covers neatly smoothed, his mind full of worries and his gloom congealing within him.
Somewhere below, the wind moaned in the chimney. Neville gave a soft snore. Seamus turned over with a creak of springs.
When Ron and Lavender were attacked, had they actually seen their attacker?
Where had Malfoy hidden the staff? His next step would surely be to smuggle it out of Hogwarts. What would he do? Malfoy surely wouldn't be foolish enough to use an owl…
Then what about a secret passage?
That was certainly possible!
Harry turned over anxiously in bed and kept on thinking. If it was a secret passage, which one would Malfoy use? Which one did he know about?
Thinking about all this, Harry missed the Marauder's Map that Fred and George had given him more and more. But, sadly, that marvellous map had gone wrong during his and Hermione's time travel and destroyed itself.
Harry spent the first half of that long night going over everything that had happened that evening.
Afterward, he began to worry about what would follow if Cliodna got the staff without a hitch and Voldemort gained a powerful ally.
Would there be heavy casualties among the Ministry of Magic and the Order of the Phoenix?
Tossing and turning, he went over these questions again and again, until at last, before dawn, weariness crept in through the cracks and carried him off to sleep.
But only a few minutes later, Harry woke again with a twitch, his heart was pounding.
He began to worry about Sirius all over again.
Remus and Tonks's wedding was only a week away, and Hermione believed that Voldemort might try, at the wedding or before it, to kill Remus, Tonks, and the child still in Tonks's tummy. But they were safe for now; it was Sirius who was in even greater danger.
If one wanted to protect a place, there was nothing better suited than the Fidelius Charm.
Granted, no one had told him outright so far, and Harry himself, to avoid the risk of a leak and for fear of disturbing Sirius, had never written to ask.
But Harry was simply certain that Sirius would be Remus and Tonks's Secret-Keeper. Whenever he thought about Remus and Tonks's safety, a clear voice sounded in his mind, telling him that Sirius was their Secret-Keeper.
It was a comfort and a terror all at the same time, for a Secret-Keeper was only as safe as his own silence.
Just like now—
"It's Polyjuice!"
Harry realized it the instant Ron and Lavender told him how things had gone.
The morning light fell grey and thin through the ward's single window. Madam Pomfrey had grudgingly allowed him in for a few minutes before breakfast, with a dire warning about raised voices.
"We never went back to the common room, Harry," Ron said, shifting against his pillows. "We followed Malfoy and Parkinson into the Forbidden Forest, and then—nothing. Somebody knocked us out. When I woke up, I was lying in the leaves with the rain in my face."
"Me too," said Lavender, hoarse, from the next bed, pulling her blanket up to her chin. "We ran straight to Professor Watson's office to see if everything was all right. We didn't go anywhere near Gryffindor Tower!"
Harry strode back and forth across the ward, his steps agitated, his face full of indignation.
"Then it's obvious! Needless to say, Malfoy and Parkinson must have taken some of your hair while you were unconscious, and then used Polyjuice Potion to pass themselves off as you! That's how they walked through the portrait hole, and the Fat Lady never suspected a thing!"
"Professor Watson thinks the people who attacked us used Polyjuice too—"
Ron, propped up in his hospital bed, had far more colour in his face than when Harry had seen him yesterday, but his eyes held a grim, baleful look.
"But he and Professor Dumbledore both refuse to believe that Malfoy and Parkinson were the ones who did it. Because whether it was in the woods, or later, when Lavender and I went chasing into the office, we never saw the attacker's face…
"And Professor Rahansen has confirmed that yesterday morning, Malfoy and Parkinson really did pay him a visit and ask him for tips on meditation! Meditation! As if Malfoy would ever sit still long enough!"
The excitement on Harry's face ebbed little by little, until at last it clouded over completely.
Evidence!
He had never thought Professor Watson could be so stubborn. The matter was already obvious, and yet he was still hunting for proof.
Silence immediately fell over the ward. Outside the window, a late rook cawed twice and flapped away through the drizzle.
For the first time, Harry felt that Malfoy's cunning had become a thorn in his side.
Not only had he hidden the staff, Harry's dagger, and Hermione's Felix Felicis very well, but he had even prepared Polyjuice Potion in advance, and at least one spare wand.
Of course, the Polyjuice Potion might not have been prepared specifically for Ron and Lavender. He might originally have planned to impersonate other Gryffindor students, and getting hold of a few hairs was no great trouble.
And none of these things had been found in last night's search. Malfoy had made the whole affair airtight, and there was not a single witness.
"Does today's paper say anything about this, Hermione?"
Ron at last broke the silence, turning to look at Hermione. She was leaning against the wall opposite his bed with a copy of the Daily Prophet gripped in her hand, and she had been lost in thought all the while.
"Oh, no—"
Hermione, roused from her silence, gave the newspaper in her hand a little wave, as if it were a thing of no great importance.
"There's nothing at all about Professor Watson's office. It only says that the International Confederation of Wizards will hold the final preparatory meeting for the Joint Task Force in Paris next Saturday…"
Hermione paused for a few seconds, then looked at Harry, and her voice dropped.
"It's the same day as Remus's wedding."
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