The Stone

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Things couldn't have been more 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. Bella 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 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 Bella thought that things couldn't have been much worse? She was wrong. When Professor McGonagall appeared, she was leading Neville.

"Harry!" 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 were up the astronomy tower. It's one o'clock in the morning. Explain yourselves."

For once, Bella didn't have an answer for her. She was staring at her slippers, as still as a statue.

"I think I've got a good idea of what's been going on," said Professor McGonagall. "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?"

Bella and Harry caught Neville's eye and both of them tried to tell him without words that this wasn't true, because Neville was looking stunned and hurt. Poor, blundering Neville - Bella knew what it must have cost him to try and find them in the dark, to warn them.

"I'm disgusted," Professor McGonagall continued. "Four students out of bed in one night! I've never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Swan, 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"

"Fifty?" Harry and Bella gasped - they would lose the lead, the lead Harry won in the last Quidditch match.

"Fifty points each," Professor McGonagall said, breathing heavily through her long pointed nose.

"Professor - please-"

"You can't-"

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do, Potter. Now get back to bed, all of you. I've never been more ashamed of Gryffindor students."

A hundred and fifty points lost. That put Gryffindor in last place. In one night, they'd ruined any chance of Gryffindor had had in the House Cup. Bella felt as though the bottom had dropped out of her stomach. How could they ever make up for this?

Bella didn't sleep all night. She knew Neville was sobbing into his pillow, and there was nothing she could say to comfort him. But she also knew Neville, like herself and Harry, was dreading the dawn. What would happen when the rest of the Gryffindor found out what they'd done?

At first, Gryffindors passing the giant hour-glasses that recorded the house points the next day thought they'd been a mistake. How could they suddenly have a hundred and fifty points fewer than yesterday? And then the story started to spread: Harry Potter, the famous Harry Potter, their hero of two Quidditch matches, had lost them all those points, him and a couple other stupid first-years.