Celeste Shalom and the Philosopher's Stone

~Chapter 11~ {The midnight duel}

Celeste and Hermione sat in the Gryffindor home room reading about Transfiguration. It was already midnight but the two girls weren't feeling asleep at all. Hermione had her favourite pink dressing gown while Celeste was wearing a deep red dressing gown bought by Lavender. Thats when they felt someone creeping from the stairs. Celeste knew those figures, "Hermione! Harry and Ron are heading for the portrait!" Celeste whispered. Hermione nodded her head. "I herd them at the dining hall. They're having a battle with Malfoy!".

"Lets go" Hermione said as the lamp flickered off then on then Off

'I can't believe you're going to do this, Harry.' Hermione said

The lamp flickered on as Hermione showed a frown on her face as Celeste who just realized that she was an inch shorter than Hermione frowned to .

'You two!' said Ron furiously. 'Go back to bed!'

'I almost told your brother,' Hermione snapped. 'Percy – he's a Prefect, he'd put a stop to this.'

Celeste's frown deepened as she saw Harry starting to ignore them.

'Come on,' he said to Ron. He pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady and climbed through the hole.

Celeste wasn't going to give up that easily. She followed Ron through the portrait hole as Hermione followed hissing at them like an angry goose.

'Don't you care about Gryffindor, do you only care about yourselves, I don't want Slytherin to win the House Cup and you'll lose all the points I got from Professor McGonagall for knowing about Switching Spells.' Hermione bickered continuously.

'Go away.'

'All right, but I warned you, you just remember what I said when you're on the train home tomorrow, you're so –'

But what Harry and Ron were, they didn't find out. Celeste and Hermione had turned to the portrait of the Fat Lady to get back inside and found themself's facing an empty painting. The Fat Lady had gone on a night-time visit and Celeste and Hermione was locked out of Gryffindor Tower.

Celeste's face turned bright red. Now because of them she was going to get in trouble!

'Now what are we going to do?' she asked shrilly.

'That's your problem,' said Ron. 'We've got to go, we're going to be late.'

The two boys hadn't even reached the end of the corridor when Celeste caught up with them.

'I'm coming with you,' she said.

'You are not.'

'D'you think I'm going to stand out here and wait for Filch to catch me? If he finds all three of us I'll tell him the truth, that I was trying to stop you and you can back me up.' Celeste replied sharply until she saw Ron's face turning into a question mark.

"Wheres Hermione?" Ron asked looking behind Celeste.

Thats when it hit her, she had left Hermione behind.

But when she was just about to reply Hermione scurried over loudly.

'You two have got some nerve –' said Ron loudly.

'Shut up, all of you!' said Harry sharply. 'I heard something.'

It was a sort of snuffling.

'Mrs Norris?' breathed Ron, squinting through the dark.

It wasn't Mrs Norris. It was Neville. He was curled up on the floor, fast asleep, but jerked suddenly awake as they crept nearer.

'Thank goodness you found me! I've been out here for hours. I couldn't remember the new password to get in to bed.'