Treacherous | Hermione Granger Book II

|33| Chapter Thirty-Three

T H I R T Y T H R E E

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The trio had only placed the cauldron on a fire that Hermione had started and added the first few ingredients into the tap water they were using when a voice knocked them off of focus.

"It's me!"

Saffron yelped from inside the stall and jumped up, falling onto Ron's lap who sat beside the toilet. Whilst Hermione had to hold onto cauldron, which luckily was heatproof, in order to stop it from collapsing.

They were relieved to see that Harry opened the door, lucking more or less recovered from his accident or whatever one would call what Lockhart did to him.

"Harry!" Hermione sighed in relief. "You gave us such a fright - come in. How's your arm?"

"Fine," Harry told them, entering the stall and taking notice of the scene, realising what they were starting.

"We'd've come to meet you, but we decided to get started on the Polyjuice Potion," Ron explained briskly. "We've decided this is the safest place to hide it."

"Did you hear about Colin?" Harry asked them, clearly unsure as to whether or not the story had spread through the school. In true Hogwarts fashion, it already had.

"Everybody knows," Saffron informed him. "That's why we're here, we need to find out what Draco knows as soon as we can,"

"Well there's something you don't know," Harry told them. "Dobby came to visit me in the middle of the night,"

The others looked up at him in pure shock. Dobby felt like such a distant memory to Saffron, so much so that she had forgotten the house elves name. But she wouldn't forget it again when Harry told them that it was Dobby who prevented Harry and Ron from getting through to the Hogwarts Express at the start of the year. Additionally, it turned out that Dobby had rigged the bludger to attack Harry. What was the most shocking of all was that Dobby claimed to have done this to make Harry leave the school due to Chamber of Secrets being opened. Dobby somehow knew that it was going to happen before the start of the school year.

"That's crazy, but if he says the Chamber of Secrets has been opened before, why isn't it documented anywhere?" said Saffron, not entirely sure she was going to take Dobby's word for fact, especially considering what the house elf had done to Harry. Regardless of his apparent intentions behind the acts, both times Harry had almost died.

"Leave that to me, surely there must be something in the library, somewhere," Hermione replied, but Ron's mind was elsewhere.

"It must've been Lucius Malfoy and now he's told dear old Draco how to do it. It's obvious,"

"Why tell Draco though?" Saffron questioned. "Why not Cygnus?"

"Don't make me read the mind of a lunatic," Ron sputtered. "There could be loads of reasons," He sighed. "Anyway, Dobby stopped us from getting on the train and broke your arm." He shook his head. "You know what, Harry? If he doesn't stop trying to save your life he's going to kill you."

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Everybody seemed to be taking the news of what happened to Colin in their own way. Everyone in the school felt some way about it, but the ways starkly contrasted one another. The way Saffron saw it, nobody in Slytherin house was overly bothered by it. Many of them were happy at the thought of Muggleborns leaving the school. Then, when it came to the Muggleborns themselves, they were terrified to near death.