Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
[ philosopher's stone ]
THINGS COULDN'T HAVE BEEN WORSE. Filch took them down to Professor McGonagall's study on the first floor, where they sat and waited without saying a word to each other. Maya was trembling. Excuses, alibis, and wild cover-up stories chased each other around her brain, each more feeble than the last. She couldn't see how they were going to get out of trouble this time. They were cornered. How could they have been so stupid as to forget the cloak? There was no reason on earth that Professor McGonagall would accept for their being out of bed and creeping around the school in the dead of night, let alone being up the tallest astronomy tower, which was out-of-bounds except for classes. Add Norbert and the invisibility cloak, and they might as well be packing their bags already.
Had Maya thought that things couldn't have been worse? She was wrong. When Professor McGonagall appeared, she was leading Neville.
"Harry! Maya!" Neville burst out, the moment he saw the other two. "I was trying to find you to warn you, I heard Malfoy saying he was going to catch you, he said you had a drag━"
Harry shook his head violently to shut Neville up, but Professor McGonagall had seen. She looked more likely to breathe fire than Norbert as she towered over the three of them.
"I would never have believed it of any of you. Mr. Filch says you were up in the astronomy tower. It's one o'clock in the morning. Explain yourselves."
Maya's mouth opened, stammering words leaving her lips but not something that could form a type of sentence. She didn't want to be in trouble ━━ if she got kicked out she'd have to sit in the orphanage all day every day until her eighteenth arrived.
"I think I've got a good idea of what's been going on," Professor McGonagall said. "It doesn't take a genius to work it out. You fed Draco Malfoy some cock-and-bull story about a dragon, trying to get him out of bed and into trouble. I've already caught him. I suppose you think it's funny that Longbottom here heard the story and believed it, too?"
Maya caught Neville's eye and tried to tell him without words that this wasn't true, because Neville was looking stunned and hurt. She tried desperately to shake her head, trying to think of an excuse, but she'd gone frozen.
"I'm disgusted," Professor McGonagall scoffed. "Four students out of bed in one night! I've never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Shaan, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. All three of you will receive detentions ━━ yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it's very dangerous ━━ and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor."
