It seemed he'd never shared this with anyone, since the students were shocked. Well, except that Goldstein merely nodded, diluting the brief moment of awkward silence with a simple phrase:
"Pretty much what I thought."
"You know," Potter suddenly smiled broadly, with satisfaction. "A couple of times, when Malfoy was being especially infuriating in the lower years, I imagined a little scene. There's the Hat sorting him, he's sitting all self-important at the table, nose in the air accepting polite congratulations, and then suddenly the Hat cries out 'Slytherin,' having ended up on my head."
The lads grinned, remembering perfectly well what absurd faces Draco was capable of pulling in a moment of upset or shock — you really could paint pictures of him. Exceedingly expressive pictures.
"He'd have hanged himself," Pansy was already baring her teeth sardonically. "He couldn't go a day before without dreaming of leadership in the House. Except as a symbol you, Potter, would have been far more interesting. Poor Draco would simply have burst into many little indignant Dracos, running about and squeakily wailing about how he'd complain to his father."
This cheered everyone up a little.
"Well," I glanced at Daphne. "The Hat offered me there too. Actually, it offered me anywhere at all."
"And me — Ravenclaw," Hermione added.
"And me," Daphne nodded.
"Slytherin," Ernie nodded. "But sort of, a little uncertainly. Because of my parents, I think, instilling responsibility and ambition on account of the business."
"And I'm a born Huff," Zacharias snorted, having finally vanquished all the documents, looking utterly happy in the process.
"So what we've got," Padma, who in this time had polished off a decent little pile of biscuits, twirled in her hands the quill she'd been using to make notes on parchment while reading a book, "is that not one of us was offered Gryffindor?"
"Perhaps it's because," Hermione pondered for a moment, knitting her brows together amusingly but sternly, "nobility, honour, and courage are more of a choice than a character trait."
"Honour isn't alien to the other Houses either," Ernie objected feebly, mostly just for form's sake.
"No, lads," Goldstein interrupted the possible argument. "It's worth understanding that all these traits and other parameters were set for the Hat about a thousand years ago. Given Gryffindor's history — I mean the wizard, not the House — it implies martial honour and nobility. You know, with a touch of pathos, self-sacrifice, and a faint whiff of plunder and pillage."
"You mean to say one should look at such a question taking the factor of the era into account?" Hermione clarified.
"Why not? It's hardly likely anyone even thought of introducing any amendments to such things with account for the change in social conditions and trends over the course of time…"
"Folks," Pansy tapped with a dessert spoon that had come to hand — the elves had served them along with simple little pastries, and when had they managed it? — "we've strayed somewhat from the topic."
"Thank you, Miss Parkinson," I nodded.
"You could've been less formal," she glanced at me.
"That was just by the by," I turned to Potter. "So how about it, Harry? Will you take us on a tour?"
"Why not. I didn't miss that place, but you know… Everything happened fast back then. Panic, the best friend's sister in danger, and Lockhart turned out to be… to put it mildly, shit."
"Not at the table," Hermione reproached him.
"I prefer to call things by their proper names, even if it's a touch improper. So when?"
So, we settle on a time.
"Who's got more lessons today?" Hermione, it seemed, hadn't lost a certain love for organisational activity.
"Numerology," Daphne, Pansy, and I responded simultaneously.
"We're going there too," Goldstein nodded in agreement, clearly meaning Padma as well.
"I'll pass," Zacharias waved a hand. "I don't seem to need it."
"Same as me," Ernie agreed. "I'll be tutored at home if need be. I don't much need NEWTs anyway, business."
Hermione heard out the others' answers and nodded, and I decided to add a couple more words to the organisational process.
"We'll still need to take the little ones back to their common rooms and other organisational trifles. Almost everyone here's a prefect, by the way, which I find amusing. And I've also got evening patrol today. What do you think, Harry, if we gather half an hour after dinner, will we make it before curfew?"
"It's not a long walk down there," Potter nodded. "But if you decide to linger, then I don't even know. If you examine everything, I think you could sit there until morning."
"Then that's what we'll do," Hermione nodded importantly. "Half an hour after dinner ends we meet… and where?"
"Let's just do it on the spot," Potter suggested, ruffling his already unruly hair. "By the toilet. Or actually inside it."
"The toilet?" Pansy arched an eyebrow, perfectly copying Snape.
"Spoils the image a bit, doesn't it?" Potter couldn't resist a jab. "The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is there."
Pansy shrugged, and the rest weren't bothered by such a thing either.
"At least," Potter added, "I don't know of another."
"Well, that's excellent," I summed up our impromptu meeting.
In truth, no one actually went anywhere — there was plenty of time until the next lesson, hardly anyone particularly suffered from idleness, and Potter decided to read his new Potions textbook. Our lot, the Huffs, aren't used to poking into others' affairs, so they were curious what sort of textbook this was that turned a no-hoper into a super potioneer, but were in no hurry to ask. The Ravenclaws, on the other hand, were more inquisitive in this respect.
"Harry," Goldstein drew Potter's attention as he read avidly and crunched on biscuits. "May I ask?"
"Go on."
"What sort of textbook is it? Don't take it the wrong way, but there was a whole scandal over it with you lot."
"Well, it just came to me," Potter showed everyone the rather battered book. "All written over by the previous owner, corrections to recipes and so on everywhere. Decided to take a risk and use it — didn't miscalculate."
"That's a touch unfair," Hermione observed drily.
"Oh, come off it, sis. You've got a perfect memory. That's also, you know, unfair."
"Touché," surprisingly, she simply smiled.
"May I have a look?" I asked for the book. "I won't eat it. For once you actually enjoyed Potions, I saw it in your eyes during the lesson. I'd be the lowest of creatures if I took away from you the book thanks to which you enjoyed the subject."
While Harry held the book out to me without question, Hermione watched this with surprise.
"I hadn't thought about it from that angle…"
I turned the book over in my hands, opened the cover, and at once saw the inscription: "This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince." Potter watched me attentively, expecting something.
"You think I know who it is?"
"Well, just in case," he returned to choosing a biscuit from the plate. "You know a lot."
"And who's there?" Daphne clearly deliberately pressed against my arm, trying to peek into the book.
"Provocateur…" I breathed quietly, and the corner of the girl's lips twitched.
"Half-Blood Prince," she read and glanced at me. "Do you know?"
"Well, technically, I know one 'prince,' but it's definitely not connected."
"Why?" Potter's attention, and that of a couple of interested others, at once turned to me.
"Well, he's not a wizard, but a boxer."
Not meeting with understanding from most of the lads, I waved a hand, as if to say: "I told you, it doesn't matter."
"A prince, you say?" Pansy pondered, tapping a finger demonstratively against her chin. "There was such a family in England. With Italian roots. And an acquaintance of mine, long ago, boasted that he personally knew 'the youngest master potioneer of the last century, a scion of the Prince family.'"
"The youngest master potioneer of the century?" naturally, Hermione at once began sifting through the information in her memory, and I'd already remembered but stayed silent. "Judging by the book, he studied here, oh, twenty or thirty years ago, no more. And that's only what they call… Professor Snape?"
Pansy, hearing this reasoning, smiled.
"Bullseye, Granger."
I, meanwhile, quickly leafing through the book, came across a familiar word. Sectumsempra.
"It's definitely Snape," I nodded. "I know this spell. And I know who its author is. And this note is clearly the author's own."
"So what we've got is," Potter took his new book in surprise, looking at it. "This book is Snape's? What irony…"
"There's your reason to get rid of the book," Hermione nodded, but Potter grinned in an unaccustomed way.
"Eh, no, Hermione. He spent five years making me hate Potions with all my soul. No way, this field will stay mine."
After this we rather calmly, amid minor conversations, did our homework or got on with our other affairs, and Potter even managed to play a quick game of chess with McMillan — they didn't manage to finish it, ran up against the moves becoming too dangerous for each of them, and any mistake carrying fatal consequences, not enough time to think.
The Numerology lesson, or, if you like, Arithmancy, passed rather easily and quickly. It seemed there was no global, significant transition in level of difficulty, but perhaps I don't understand something, since I'd studied this subject on my own. It's quite possible Professor Vector presented the material differently. As it was, just even more mathematics, practically higher mathematics already, with a leaning towards the mystical and specifically the magical properties of numbers, applicable both to other magical disciplines and as an independent "magical unit." In short, I don't think there's much sense in attending the advanced course of this subject. Only if there turn out to be very few interesting subjects.
Dinner passed peacefully, noisily.
Students shared their impressions with one another, the first-years looked tired but very pleased — today they'd dug in the earth, seen animagery performed by McGonagall in Transfiguration, and even made their first successes in that discipline, though not all of them. And Slughorn, whose lesson had been their last, had altogether managed to win over their hearts, making of Potions a true little miracle. There he was — the experienced teacher with enormous tenure and a real pull towards teaching, towards cultivating young minds. It seems to me Slughorn takes sincere pleasure in watching children grow and develop. Not at all like Snape.
After dinner and the first-years' return to the common room, Hannah and I quickly collected the forms from the participants and heads of the House clubs and, having dropped them off with the Head of House, boldly set off in search of adventure, or more precisely — to the girls' lavatory on the second floor. Naturally, I concealed us beforehand with charms, since it really is rather strange from the outside.
Stepping inside, into the half-dark of the lavatory, the first thing we saw was a dialogue between Daphne and Pansy and the ghost everyone knows, Moaning Myrtle. I hadn't hidden us with magic too thoroughly, and the apparition, being more sensitive to magic, noticed us.
"Oh, more guests," the ghostly girl smiled happily.
Daphne at once took her wand and cast Homenum Revelio, while Pansy awaited the manifestation of a possible adversary with her wand in hand. I removed the invisibility in the end.
"Easy, everyone," I showed my unarmed hands. "No sudden movements."
"What was the invisibility for?" Pansy breathed out, calming her agitation.
"Oh yes, of course," I nodded. "Because it's a perfectly normal thing when a boy and a girl secretly enter an abandoned girls' lavatory practically right before curfew."
"Oh, for…" Pansy breathed out in vexation, folding her arms under her chest. "I was so looking forward to the trip to the Chamber of Secrets that I didn't think about such things at all. So then what could one think, seeing a crowd of students gradually converging here?"
"Nothing good," Hannah nodded, brushing off non-existent specks of dust.
"Debauchery and impropriety!" Moaning Myrtle was having fun, flying about. "Hee-hee-hee!"
After a couple of minutes the lavatory was already getting rather crowded, though there's plenty of space here. True, most of that space was taken up by the central column with the washbasins. Why crowded? Well, everyone had come, and ten people is already a crowd, as far as a lavatory goes.
"So, everyone," I began, when Potter, among the last, reached us and came over to me. "Welcome to the secret inter-House gathering of desperate adventure-seekers."
"Right, I understand it all," Pansy planted her hands on her hips again. "But we're currently in a very ambiguous situation, and the goal is more absurd still. I propose we get straight down to business."
"By the way, here," Potter held out to us a dozen shrunken brooms in his palm. "Forgot to say that the descent requires either a backside of stone or the ability to fly."
"Timely," Daphne snorted.
"It sort of slipped my mind," Potter apologised. "So, do you need brooms?"
Almost everyone immediately took one, only Hermione was hesitant. Daphne, seeing that I wasn't taking a broom, glanced at me questioningly, to which I simply put one arm around her.
"Unexpected and inappropriate," yet she smiled, and when by an effort of will I made myself rise into the air, literally hovering, she was surprised, sharply embracing me in return so as to hold on more easily. "Very unexpected…"
"Granger," Pansy, like the others who had already returned the brooms to their original size, looked at me in surprise. "Will there ever come a day when there's nothing left to surprise me with?"
"We've moved to first names, haven't we?" I smiled, looking at the others.
"Just a shock."
A string of questions rained down, but quickly dried up under the action of Hermione's commanding voice: "Time! Questions later." The flying skill wasn't needed yet, so I returned Daphne and me to the solid surface of the floor. Hermione made up her mind, took a broom from Potter, and returned it to its original size.
"So," Goldstein was the first to break the silence. "We're standing in the middle of a girls' lavatory, almost at night, with brooms in hand. What next?"
"Now," Potter turned to the washbasins on the column and approached one of them, leaning slightly over the tap. "Yes, here it is."
The lad fell silent for a moment, concentrated, and the others froze in anticipation.
"Open up."
The column, with a booming sound of moving mechanisms, with a rasp of stone on stone, began to divide, sliding apart and opening an enormous hole downward, where darkness reigned. Potter drew his wand, lit a Lumos on it and, mounting his broom, flew over to the hole.
"Well then, down we go?"
With these words he began to descend, lighting the way.
"Bloody hell…" Ernie breathed out, repeating Potter's manoeuvre.
One after another the students descended, and then it was just Daphne and me left.
"You've tensed up. Has something happened?" she looked into my eyes with a touch of concern, having, incidentally, not stopped embracing me all this time.
"You could say that. Shall we fly?"
"Of course."
She pressed a little closer, and I raised us into the air with magic, with its help also created a point of Lumos above our heads, and we began to descend smoothly down the dark tunnel. What absurdity, after all. There was no way whatsoever that I could have turned out to have undocumented abilities, so to speak. How I dislike surprises of this sort. But don't surprises make our life somewhat more interesting?
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