Dark Pasts { A Harry Potter Story }

Chapter 22 - Gillyweed

"You were right," Harry said as he joined me in the library the next day. "About taking Cedric's advice."

"You figured out the egg?" I asked in an excited whisper.

"Yeah," he said, not sounding as excited. "Here — " he handed me a small piece of parchment, "I wrote down what it said."

Frowning I went over the lines, which read:

Come seek us where our voices sound,

We cannot sing above the ground,

And while you're searching ponder this:

We've taken what you'll sorely miss,

An hour long you'll have to look,

And to recover what we took,

But past an hour — the prospect's black,

Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.

"'Come seek us where our voices sound' . . . 'An hour long you'll have to look' . . ." I repeated, my eyes widening once I realized what the words meant. "Harry — "

"I know," he said simply. "How am I supposed to breathe underwater for an hour?"

I gathered my things and we walked out of the library and made our way to Charms.

"We'll figure it out," I said, my mind racing.

Harry said. "There's something else — "

"There you are!" Hermione said as we sat down beside her and Ron in Charms.

"Listen, I have to tell you something," Harry began and explained to them what he had discovered about the egg.

"You said you'd already worked out that egg clue!" Hermione said indignantly once Harry had brought them up to speed.

"Keep your voice down!" harry said. "I just need to — sort of fine-tune it, all right?"

"Today, we will be practicing the Banishing Charm," Professor Flitwick said. "I have given each of you a stack of cushions on which to practice to avoid any more — er — unfortunate accidents. . . ."

"Just forget about the egg for a minute, all right?" Harry said in a low voice as we got to work. "I was going back to the Tower when I saw Mr. Crouch's name on the map," he explained, making me frown.

"So I went to see but my leg sank right through the trick step. The egg slipped from my arms with the Marauder's Map. Filch heard it and thought it was Peeves and then Snape showed up too. He knew it was me straight away when he saw the egg and the map, but Moody showed up — "

"Moody?" Ron interjected.

"Yeah," Harry said. "Moody can see through the cloak, remember? So he saw me, but he didn't say anything to the others. Anyways — the weird thing is that Snape said someone broke into his office — and I saw Mr. Crouch in there on the map — but he was nowhere to be seen so Snape thought it was me. Moody was curious about that, but Snape told him he'd already searched his office. . . ."

"Then, after Snape and Filch left, Moody looked at the map and asked if he could borrow it . . . I couldn't say no, could I? I owed him one," Harry said. "Wish I still had it, though. . . . Moody asked me if I had seen who'd broken into Snape's office, and he seemed sort of — well — alarmed when I told him it was Mr. Crouch. Said it was 'interesting'. . . ."

"Snape said Moody's searched his office?" Ron said. "What ... d'you reckon Moody's here to keep an eye on Snape as well as Karkaroff?"

"Well, I dunno if that's what Dumbledore asked him to do, but he's definitely doing it," Harry said. "Moody said Dumbledore only lets Snape stay here because he's giving him a second chance or something. . . ."