𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎𝐔𝐒 || Harry J. Potter [DISCONTINUED]

Chapter 14 ✎

"We weren't about to shag!"
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Third Person POV

No one in Gryffindor Tower slept that night. They 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.

Jilly gained consciousness a few seconds after she had fainted, and was being stared at by majority of the common room due to Harry panicking by her side.

"Piss off you lot!" She yelled at them as most people looked away. "I'm fine Harry, thanks." Jilly accepted his bigger hand into her smaller one.

Professor McGonagall came back at dawn, to tell them that he had again, escaped.

Throughout the day, everywhere they went they saw signs of tighter security; Professor Flitwick could be seen teaching the front doors to recognize a large picture of Sirius Black; 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 expertly 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 surly 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 couldn't help noticing that the statue of the one-eyed witch on the third floor remained unguarded and unblocked.

It seemed that Fred and George had been right in thinking that they - and now Harry, Jilly, Ron, and Hermione - were the only ones who knew about the hidden passageway within it.

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

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

Harry was glad Ron took this view. If the one-eyed witch was boarded up too, he would never be able to go into Hogsmeade again.

Ron had also become an instant celebrity. For the first time in his life, people were paying more attention to him than to Harry, and it was clear that Ron was rather enjoying the experience.

Though still severely shaken by the night's events, he 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?" Ron added to Harry and Jilly as the group of second-year girls who had been listening to his chilling tale departed. "Why did he run?"

Harry and Jilly had been wondering the same thing. Why had Black, having got the wrong bed, not silenced Ron and proceeded to Harry?