Vagary

Chapter 21 The Fine Hour Harry

Harry hurried out of the common room and along the seventh floor as fast as he could to Dumbledore's office, passing nobody but Peeves, who swooped past in the opposite direction, throwing bits of chalk at Harry in a routine sort of way and cackling loudly as he dodged Harry's defensive jinx. Once Peeves had vanished, there was silence in the corridors; with only fifteen minutes left until curfew, most people had already returned to their common rooms.

And then Harry heard a scream and a crash. He stopped in his tracks, listening.

"How--dare--you--aaaaargh!"

The noise was coming from a corridor nearby; Harry sprinted towards it, his wand at the ready, hurtled round another corner and saw Professor Trelawney sprawled upon the floor, her head covered in one of her many shawls, several sherry bottles lying beside her, one broken.

"Professor--"

Harry hurried forward and helped Professor Trelawney to her feet. Some of her glittering beads had become entangled with her glasses. She hiccoughed loudly, patted her hair, and pulled herself up on Harry's helping arm.

"What happened, Professor?"

"You may well ask!" she said shrilly. "I was strolling along, brooding upon certain Dark portents I happen to have glimpsed ..."

But Harry was not paying much attention. He had just noticed where they were standing: there on the right was the tapestry of dancing trolls and, on the left, that smoothly impenetrable stretch of stone wall that concealed--

"Professor, were you trying to get into the Room of Requirement?"

"... omens I have been vouchsafed--what?"

She looked suddenly shifty.

"The Room of Requirement," Harry repeated. "Were you trying to get in there?"

"I--well--I didn't know students knew about--"

"Not all of them do," Harry said. "But what happened? You screamed... it sounded as though you were hurt..."

"I--well," Professor Trelawney said, drawing her shawls around her defensively and staring down at him with her vastly magnified eyes. "I wished to--ah--deposit certain--um--personal items in the Room..." And she muttered something about "nasty accusations".

"Right," Harry said, glancing down at the sherry bottles. "But you couldn't get in and hide them?"

He found this very odd; the Room had opened for him, after all, when he had wanted to hide the Half-Blood Prince's book.

"Oh, I got in all right," Professor Trelawney said, glaring at the wall. "But there were people already in there."

"People in--? Who?" Harry demanded. "Who was in there?"

"I have no idea," Professor Trelawney said, looking slightly taken aback at the urgency in Harry's voice. "I walked into the Room and I heard two voices, which has never happened before in all my years of hiding--of using the Room, I mean."

"Two voices? Saying what?"

"I don't know that they were saying anything," Professor Trelawney said. "They were... whooping."

"Whooping?"

"Gleefully," she said, nodding.

Harry stared at her.

"Was it a male and female?"

"I believe so, yes," Professor Trelawney said.

"And they sounded happy?"