Lily Luna Potter

The Midnight Meeting

We reached the library, and Ella found her book on Switching Spells. She got slightly sidetracked though, with a compilation of essays about the domestication of Color-Changing Horned Daisies. ("Simply thrilling," Lorcan exclaimed sarcastically, earning a whack on the head with a book and a fierce glare ensued by Ella.) I had to drag her out of the plant section. As we were about to leave, Hugo suddenly stopped in his tracks. The rest of us practically toppled on top of him as he was in front. He put a finger to his lips, silencing us.

"...he asked me for a book on prophecies yesterday," Madame Pince was saying in a hushed tone. "I thought it rather strange."

"The boy ran into my third hour class this morning quite upset," another voice replied.

"Well, the poor boy's parents have been taken into the Ministry, I'd be in shock, too," Madame Pince continued. Suddenly we heard her turn around and come toward us. Quickly we dispersed, running in various directions. They had been talking about Scorpius Malfoy.

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I spent the rest of that day and the next one anxiously awaiting midnight. Nothing eventful occurred (apart from Professor Parkinson's outburst at Lorcan for only writing 12 inches on the Wolfsbane Potion instead of 22 and was sentenced to detention; and how Patrick Finnegan was trying to change a rat to a teapot in Transfiguration and created a hideous rat-pottery hybrid that spouted tea and squeaked). Lorcan convinced me to have a go at wizard's chess against him when he returned from his detention, despite Hugo's and Ella's constant reminders of the Potions essay and the Astronomy chart due tomorrow. By dinner time, I had shakily knocked over three games of wizard's chess and Lorcan had nearly abandoned his attempts of playing with me.

Finally, after a hearty dinner and a few hours of being interrogated by my brother James about why I wasn't my usual self, the common room cleared out. At 11:30, Ella and I were the only ones awake in our dormitory, so I crept out of bed and collected the invisibility cloak from under my bed, stowed safely in my trunk out of sight.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Ella whispered to me from her bed. "I really don't think this is a good idea, you know."

"You've told me that thirty times already, Ella," I whispered back, shutting my trunk and standing up. "I'll see you tomorrow morning. It'll be fine."

Even in the dark I could sense her disapproval. I shook my head and quietly opened the dormitory door, carefully avoiding the creakiest floorboards. I snuck cautiously downstairs, hoping no one would be in the common room. Thankfully no one was, so I left Gryffindor Tower unscathed.

I walked through the corridors enveloped in my cloak, feeling rather unconstrained. It was a strange feeling, walking through the empty, echoing corridors of Hogwarts unaccompanied and with only dimly lit candles to guide my way, producing eerie shadows on the stone walls. Finally, after about twenty-five minutes, I reached the sixth floor corridor where the Room of Requirement was located. Slowly I reached out as the door materialized in front of me. I grasped the metal doorknob and opened it, not knowing what could possibly lie beyond it.

I entered the warmly lit space, furnished with two plush sofas and a small coffee table in the center of the room. The corners were shadowy, parts of the room the lanterns on the table couldn't reach. Looking around, I could see no one else occupying the room. I stepped further inside, letting the heavy door click shut behind me.

Once I was fully inside, it occurred to me that the letter might have simply been a prank, to lure me out of bed in the hopes I would get caught by a teacher patrolling the halls. But what I saw confirmed that it was not a prank. A figure stepped out of the shadows, and the person I saw was probably the last one I expected to see.