2 Metanoia || Harry Potter

2- THE PREFECTS BATH

As Harry had no idea how long a bath he would need to work out the secret of the golden egg, he decided to do it at night with the help of Cassie. Reluctant to accept the offer, Cassie agreed to help him. Although Harry was skeptical, she convinced him to use the Prefects bathroom so they had less of a chance of getting caught.

They planned their excursion carefully, because they both had been caught out of bed and out-of-bounds by Filch the caretaker in the middle of the night once before, and had no desire to repeat the experience.

The Invisibility Cloak would, of course, be essential, and as an added precaution, Harry thought he would give the Marauder's Map to Cassie, so she could come down the stairs of the girl's dormitory without being caught by any prefects.

On Thursday night, Harry sneaked up to bed, put on the cloak, crept back downstairs, and, just as he had done on the night when Hagrid had shown him the dragons, waited for the portrait hole to open. This time it was Ron who waited outside to give the Fat Lady the password ("banana fritters").

"Good luck," Ron muttered, climbing into the room as Harry crept out past him.

Down the hall, he stopped at the alcove that Cassie agreed to meet him in. As planned, she was there and ready to go. She slipped under the cloak with him and they made their way to the bathroom.

It was awkward moving under the cloak together that night because Harry had the heavy egg under one arm and the map held in front of his nose with the other while Cassie held onto towels and their wands.

Looking over at the map, Cassie noticed how many people were really walking around at night. Ever since Peter Pettigrew escaped Azkaban, Dumbledore hasn't gone to extra measures to keep his students safe like he did when Sirius escaped.

When they reached the statue of Boris the Bewildered, a lost-looking wizard with his gloves on the wrong hands, they located the right door, Harry leaned close to it, and muttered the password, "Pine fresh," just as Cedric had told him. The door creaked open. He and Cassie slipped inside, bolted the door behind them, and pulled off the Invisibility Cloak, looking at their surroundings.

Cassie's immediate reaction was that it would be worth becoming a prefect just to be able to use this bathroom. It was softly lit by a splendid candle-filled chandelier, and everything was made of white marble, including what looked like an empty, rectangular swimming pool sunk into the middle of the floor.

About a hundred golden taps stood all around the pool's edges, each with a differently colored jewel set into its handle. There was also a diving board. Long white linen curtains hung at the windows; a large pile of fluffy white towels sat in a corner, and there was a single goldenframed painting on the wall. It featured a blonde mermaid who was fast asleep on a rock, her long hair over her face. It fluttered every time she snored.

Cassie moved past Harry, who was gawking at the room, and looked around at the taps. While she tried to figure out how to use them, Harry had a thought to himself. How on earth was this supposed to help solve the mystery of the egg? Nevertheless, he put one of the fluffy towels, the cloak, the map, and the egg at the side of the swimming-poolsized bath, then knelt down next to Cassie and helped her turn on a few of the taps.

He could tell at once that they carried different sorts of bubble bath mixed with the water, though it wasn't bubble bath as Harry had ever experienced it. One tap gushed pink and blue bubbles the size of footballs; another poured ice-white foam so thick that Harry thought it would have supported his weight if he'd cared to test it; a third sent heavily perfumed purple clouds hovering over the surface of the water.

Harry amused himself for a while turning the taps on and off, particularly enjoying the effect of one whose jet bounced off the surface of the water in large arcs, but Cassie just hit him on his bare arm and motioned to the water.